The red-dyed one here
is my stillborn son’s eye,
the tiny orb that made
my life complete.

The blue one is a filed
finger bone from my brother.
He would never touch me
that way again.

This, this was a souvenir
from a loudmouthed hitchhiker!
Gruesome, you see, but it would
shrivel into a husk in two months.

All the other glistening beads
did not have their meanings yet.
In time, they should earn their
names, gain souls, don faces.

Beadwork
originally published in Big Pulp Winter 2011: Interrogate My Heart Instead

Kristine Ong Muslim’s work has been accepted by over five hundred publications including Aberrant Dreams, Abyss & Apex, Expanded Horizons, Space & Time, and Tales of the Talisman. She has received several Honorable Mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror as well as five nominations for the Pushcart Prize and four for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award.