Sharon Olds - The Necklace lyrics

At the worst of the depression, one moment in the office, suddenly, my necklace shifted, flowed across some high ribs and sank down along the top of one breast as if a creature had got into my shirt, yet I felt its will-lessness, caress of matter only, small whipper or snapper, milk or garter, just the vertebrae now, as if a stripped spine had taken its coccyx in its jaw around my throat's equator, and now stirred on the mortal plates. And these were the pearls from my mother, as if she slithered along me to say, Come away from your gloom, your father, that garden is a grave, come away, come away – as if some crumbs of her milquetoast, aged and polished to a gem hardness, spoke in oyster Braille on my chest near my own breast, s**ler singing to s**ler, anti-Circe my mother led me away from that trough with a light raking, over me, of her wiggly whip – just one wobble along me, globe on her axis, chariot-wheel of morning.