AVARICE Poem by Yusef Komunyakaa

At six, she chewed off
The seven porcelain buttons
From her sister's christening gown
& hid them in a Prince Albert can

On a sill crisscrossing the house
In the spidery crawlspace.
She'd weigh a peach in her hands
Till it rotted. At sixteen,

She gazed at her little brother's
Junebugs pinned to a sheet of cork,
Assaying their glimmer, till she
Buried them beneath a fig tree's wide,

Green skirt. Now, twenty-six,
Locked in the beauty of her bones,
She counts eight engagement rings
At least twelve times each day.