Why I Haven’t Cleaned the Confetti Coins from Our December Drinks Three Years Ago Out of My Purse

They fill the depths with distant wells and ripple
when my hand digs through. They glow like Glamour Shots—
oddly alluring, mostly tacky, probably
toxic, what is this stuff anyway? Silvery
as lambent waters . . . when Peter Ustinov
played Nero playing a terrible song on his lyre
and everyone had to pretend it was amazing
he brayed, O lambent flame . . . I can still hear him shout
“Tigellinus! Bring me the weeping vase!”
We used to save our tears, to honor the dead
or to win at grief: Behold the volume yes
the volume of my sadness, and despair
if you could not give or get as much. Lachrymal,
these slippery disco discs. Preservative,
they flash a winter light’s long pleasure
as it parts into separate evenings.
They still surprise me when I’ve plumb forgotten
I carry their underworld, wonderful
with us—four women at a table for four
in a gravel yard by a bonfire pouring smoke
into the holy days of our hair, and the sun went down
on the food trucks, and our asses were happy but cold.

-Katie Hartsock