Silver band

it was just a ring.
a piece of machine
shopped metal made
by a stranger in upstate
new York.
grinding and polishing
at some anvil,
on a stool
in the half darkness
of a factory.
a thick silver band of
white gold.
almost a thousand dollars
in hard earned
money, spent.
shiny in the light,
glimmering softly in
the worn folds of my
finger.
how easily it flattened
under the hammers weight,
yanked off in bitter sadness,
strike after solid
strike. no remorse,
no regret, no mistake.
I pounded it into a squared
roman coin against the cement
floor.
i turned it into
a mysterious shape
not forged in love
not from joy, but from
a deeper darker
place. a place i'll
never understand
or go back to.