<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Sonnet for the Safe Kept Object</span><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve; font-size: 22px;"><br></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">The only lock of hair I have ever mourned</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">is a silky strand—a baby's purest blonde,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">saved from the first cut of a daughter's hair</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">& preserved with a photo under glass.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">This lock will never darken, never gray,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">grow old or coarse, this monument of loss</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">& family—dead at twenty-one.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">The irony! Before an imminent</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">separation, to offer a lock of hair</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">was thought to be a sign of consecration.</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">Once this daughter, unschooled in death's </span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">finality, found a dead bird in a fir tree,</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">took a feather for prosperity—unaware</span><br style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 22px;">of life's elasticity, restless, in love with destiny—</span><div style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div><div style="font-size: 22px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Jill Bialoksy</span></div></div></div></body></html>