A Thimble’s Worth

Is there value in it, not 
to discard what’s broken? 
Her ceramic thimble, split

down the middle: once 
a prized trinket kept neat 
in her well oiled secretary,

now a souvenir of some part 
of his mother, which recalls 
the whole of her he’s inherited

in little stashes of acquired
non-fungibles, misfit curiosities, 
collectible thrift exhumed from 

cottages in Irish nettles or 
rickety Midwest hovels. True. 
One’s absence can endow 

the shape of any remnant
this well-loved. Then, yes,
he should let it prevail: that

glass shelf in the vitrine 
with its dusty ringlet to mark 
the little zero of it; make room

for his own "new"; gather up
her bone china, silverplate,
and gimcrack into cairns

he will lavish properly 
in his parlor, perhaps the way 
bowerbirds, when summer 

ends, assemble and abandon
what can only recall for them
disuse. Or, instead, keep

the cleaved thimble halves
well apart, of which one
of two he will tuck inside

his sewing tackle, the other,
an artifact to bury within
the house’s archaeology.

Then, by serendipity and 
utility, each might simply 
coalesce and require no other

proof of who she once was
or still is in the muddled
stitches of his workday.

Situated in the intersection of queerness and disability, Karl Sherlock’s writing appears in journals and anthologies such as After Happy Hour, Assaracus, Cream City Review, Dickinson Review, The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet (dis lit anthology), In Our Shoes (LGBTQ poetry anthology), Jacaranda Review, The James White Review, Lime Hawk, Matador Review, Mollyhouse, The Radvocate, Tinge, Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Literature, and others. In 2014, Sundress Publications selected his memoir about marrying a conversion therapy torture survivor as a "Best of the Net" finalist. A Fulbright alumnus and a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Karl is a poetry workshop instructor and co-coordinator of Grossmont College's Creative Writing Program. He lives in El Cajon, CA with his parrot and is a palliative caregiver to his critically ill husband, Max.