ABSTRACT
You see this basket holds beads of many sorts and sizes, as delicate as drops of water. Some more complex and intricate than any spider’s design. I collect them as our daughters enter this village and deposit their waist beads at death’s gate. If you look closely you can discern within each bead the hues of blues; this woman’s birth, that one’s budding of breasts; the first blood, the sacrament of sex, childbearing, old age, death. Feel their surfaces, the ridges of happiness and hollows of heartbreaks. Hear in them as they meet each other, the sound of living waters.
