Rhinestones
  
  
 I think she was spooning custard into my bowl,
 Grandma Phyllis, when I asked her about the owl
 pinned to her dress. “Are those rubies?” I wondered.
 The eyes of the tiny bejeweled bird caught the light,
 glowed as bright as the coffee percolator’s red spot.
 She fiddled with Saran wrap. I didn’t think she’d heard.
  
 “Oh, this?” She tapped the tip of her red-enameled nail
 on the owl’s breast. Metal plumage rattled like hail
 had, the night before, on asphalt shingles over my bed.
 “No. Just paste.” I thought of the white goo at school, 
 how all the girls made it into fake fingernails, would
 wave their hands like movie stars, fling invisible
  
 feather boas over their shoulders, call each other 
 “Dar-link!” Grandma, whose hair glinted high over
 her pink scalp, showed me the worn gold bands on her left hand,
 sprinkled with clouded stones pressed like raisins into dough,
 hazy with lemon oil and cold cream. “These, though,”
 she smiled, “are real,” and lit a cigarette. “Understand?”
  
  
 Leslie Schultz 

Who defines what is real? Who determines value? Does the surface reveal or conceal?

Questions with no fixed answers….