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Tina Tocco 117 Nana’s Earrings Tina Tocco (2007) My nana wears clip-on earrings. They are costume pearls, real to her and to me. They lie low on lobes almost as big, flapping a hand span away as she chatters at the end of the day in the after-dinner tints of the milk glass lamp. At her rosewood vanity, she slips them off with a click from each, a green streak left where their globes had been. The gobs are handed off to me— to quieting hands and quieting pleas— if I say that I have been good. They nip a bit when they sink in to skin of still a fragile width. I strut the room like Rita Hayworth, hoping they will pierce. My nana claps her hands at me and I run to them for her to take the heavy balls and lay them in their special sleeping place— a box that came from somewhere far with empty pockets meant for things my nana doesn’t know to want. ...

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