Nest

By Oz Hardwick

I carry my mother in the palm of my hand. The obvious simile is a bird — or, more specifically, a blue
hummingbird — but I don’t want to go there yet. Instead, I’ll explore the image of a jeweller’s branded
box, with lettering like a 60s cigarette packet or a tissue leaf from a box of chocolate mints you’d only buy for special occasions. It’s the kind that holds a ring on a plush scarlet cushion. Sometimes it’s a sparkler for the peak of a giddy dream, at others it’s the ordinary beauty which will ache with love for year after year after year. But what of the box? To a child, it can hold a treasure of plastic, a phalanx of troops, a susurration of seashells, a bouquet of bears’ eyes, an epiphany of planets. And this one? This one? This one cups a blue egg in scarlet plush. Because it’s a bird. It was always a bird.