Ring

This morning I was vacuuming and when I turned the vacuum off, it made a kind of KerChunk sound and then when I shook the stick part of the vacuum, my silver winged skull ring fell out.

(The amazing sucking power of the Dyson cannot be denied.)

I immediately popped the ring back on my middle finger, where a silver winged skull ring belongs, right? in case you need to flip somebody off? and have been wearing it all day and it feels good, heavy and strong and fierce and right. It sits clunkily, shiny, next to my wedding ring.

I found the ring last week when I was looking for several hundred bobby pins to tame the mushroom that was growing on my head. (Don’t worry, it was a mushroom made of hair and it’s gone now, the nice stylist at the haircuttery place fixed it today and I love her and I’m going to sleep on her doorstep, that’s why I’m not telling you who she is because if she googles herself I will totally have a restraining order taken out against me and I can’t have that. What if the mushroom comes back?)

On this night last week, I was going to the second official meeting of my writers’ group – yes, I joined a writers’ group – and I wanted to be able to see them so I needed to pin the mushroom down. Instead of bobby pins, I found the ring and as though it hadn’t been three years since I last wore it, I slipped it on my finger, upside down so that people could see its grimace, and wore it all evening. I took it off for bed, because winged skull rings can hurt you while you sleep, which I guess is when it ended up on the floor.

Partly it’s nice to have something new to fidget with. Partly the weight on my finger is reassuring. Mostly it’s just nice to wear a small piece of my previous self on my current self, to bridge the distance.