Pearl diver

You watched your mother dab her throat with Femme before passing the pearls to your father. He fastened the clasp, fingers lingering. Later you weighed the strand in your tiny hands, seduced by the clean clack of pearls colliding in your palm.

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Now they breathe with your scent. When your lover fastens the clasp, his fingers stumble on the pearl I pried from its oystery womb. My greased body burned under the ropes that lowered me to the ocean floor. Eighty seconds. One hundred feet. Nine times an hour. When I surfaced, the ocean hummed in my ears.