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Young Writers Society



Green Beads and Brown Beads

by TeenQueen


There is a bracelet
Of green beads and brown beads
And for three months it sat in my drawer.

Once a resolute promise,
Once an unspoken fidelity,
It is now a remnant, a fragment,
A broken piece of a broken memory.

It used to rest on my nightstand,
It used to embrace my wrist.
It used to be intertwined between my fingers.

For three months it sat in my drawer,
Three, four, five months.
Now it sits
In a black lace jewellery bag
Inside a white coin purse, with red elephants and a gold border, that my mother got from Thailand
Behind the doors of a combination-lock safe.
It sits, it sits, it waits.

The bracelet,
Of green beads and brown beads
And black ones too,
Is living on borrowed time
Till the day its owner decides to reclaim it,
To reclaim the broken memory,
And all that came with it.

It sits, it sits, it waits
For the day it will rest on another night stand,
On another wrist,
Between someone else's fingers.

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14 Reviews

Points: 372
Reviews: 14

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Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:06 pm
TwilightMuse wrote a review...



I absolutely loved this, I found myself wondering the entire time what happened. What happened to make you, or whoever this is about, not wear that bracelet anymore? Who gave it to you? Ahhh I just want to know what happened!
The line

inside a white coin purse, with red elephants and a gold boarder, that my mother got from Thailand
Could probably be shorter. It's so much longer than all the other lines it just doesn't seem to fit quite the way it possibly should.
Also,
It sits, it sits, it waits
really gives the illusion that this bracelet is somehow alive and doesn't know what it did wrong, why it's just sitting in that drawer.
I think you have a lot of talent in portraying emotion and I can't wait to read more of your work. (by the way this is my first review so if the quotes don't format right I'm really sorry)




TeenQueen says...


Thank you so much. I love you:)



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30 Reviews

Points: 370
Reviews: 30

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Sat Oct 03, 2015 4:23 pm
sinistercutlass wrote a review...



Your text has a lulling, fairytale storybook kind of rhythm to it, which I really like. It suits the lost, found, and waiting-to-be-found theme quite well. Am I interpreting the poem correctly, when I deduce that the girl's mother has also served as a safe-keeping guardian for the purse that someone else lost?

I want to make a suggestion. For the most part, I feel your language is beautiful and easy-flowing. I merely suggest what I think is a very slight improvement on something already great: I would modify

"Inside a white coin purse, with red elephants and a gold border,"

to

"Inside a white coin purse, where red elephants march across a gold border,"

It's more picturesque, it's a bit more specific regarding the design, it's more... magical.

Am I missing something deeper in this poem? Did the bracelet belong to a friend or lover who is now estranged from the keeper of the bracelet?

It's seriously charming how you echo the stanza about the bracelet embracing wrists, and twining between fingers, but you hauntingly, mysteriously change the person from the speaker of the poem to the missing friend.




TeenQueen says...


Hi :) Thank you for your lovely comments.

TO answer your question, yes it is about an object that used to be to an estranged loved one.




"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."
— Bishop Desmond Tutu