The front-room sideboard
had a drawer crammed
with silky headscarves,
the kind that were
used for warding off windy days
back when hair was set only once a week.
An assortment of patterns for moods that could be
folded a hundred different ways and
arranged according to
shape, size, texture or hue.
At the back room coffee table,
I'd stack her aging butterfly coasters,
fingers tracing
wings
held between layers of glass
stained yellow with tea seepage,
their magic dust knocked off
yet still iridescent if turned the right way
to catch the afternoon sunlight.
When she died the scarves and buttons
were gone before I could claim them:
gone to op-shops
to be labelled with 25p price tags.
But I took the coasters home,
flew them to the other side of the world
and hammered tacks
in a line above my window,
so the butterflies could
catch the sun everyday.