“Damn swans,” my mother grunts under her throat,
As I hold one, index and thumb, and another, index and middle,
My other hand reaching down, fishing a tealight candle
from the box of metal swans. My fingers are looped
through the holes in their wings.

“I liked the theme of your wedding,” I say,
and she finds her voice and says,
“My theme was roses,” and I say,
“I know,”
because I did know, but I didn’t understand
the aesthetic significance of a couple swans
in a bed of roses, (what a romantic image,)
but I do know, yes, thinking,

I do know the significance of a mother-in-law
sitting on what will be the wedding bed, with a lamp casting
yellow over the groom’s wrung hands, whispering
“I seriously need you to reconsider marrying that girl.”

And the next day a box of silver swan napkin-holders were gifted?

Or no, it wasn’t the next day—it would’ve been in the wedding
preparations? “My wedding theme was roses,” she had said before,
sitting in the living room reminiscing with pictures to her back,
and I had looked at the photo above her, my father in black,
and her with the rose-curls etched into the white of her dress.

“and she shows up with swans. Four-hundred silver swan
napkin-holders. I was like, Hell no, about to send my bridesmaids
to the dollar store to find four-hundred rose-themed somethings.”

Anyway, “Damn swans,” she says, and I’m holding one
between thumb and index, like a specimen,
and I don’t say “I liked your theme”
because that would be a stupid thing to say.
I say, “if they’re ‘damn swans’
then why are they still here?”
“They’re from our wedding.”

We’re drinking a bottle of champagne from their wedding,
a whole closet’s taken up by the rose-embroidered gown,
and I see the pictures every day on the wall.
“We can get rid of them. Are they real silver?” I ask.
“Only silver tarnishes like that,” my mother says.
“We can polish them,” I say. “Appraise them.
Real silver might fetch good money.”

Or wait, we ended up doing something else with them.

“Damn swans,” she says, and I know I have to say something
wise, something only a child whose existence grandma almost prevented could say.

Out of bad memories, good. Something like that comes out
of my mouth. My mother rises and I don’t watch where she goes.

I pull another tealight candle out of the box of swans and set it with the others.
My mother returns, holding a draw-string bag of bubble-wrapped crystals,
gifts for other new age friends, plucks the swan holder from my hand,
sets the bag between its holey wings and holds it out to me,
as a child holds a wrapped gift out to her mother.

---

Rene Seledotis (he/him) is a fiction and poetry writer from the Metro-Detroit area. He earned his BA in creative writing at Oakland University and served as a poetry editor on the Oakland Arts Review, which he enjoyed so much that he started his own literary journal, 25:05 Magazine. His work has seen publication in Turtle Way Journal, Variety Pack, and the Wayne Literary Review.