It came yesterday,

Valentine’s Day,

In the mail:

Joe’s wedding ring.

Made of meteorite:

Chunks of streaked, slate-colored iron

Dropped to earth from space,

And shiny, copper-colored

Rose gold,

From inside the earth.

A particular design

For a particular man.

I had to order it over the Internet —

Dizzying to send that much money over

Paypal for a piece of

Eternal jewelry.

It came via insured mail from

Flagstaff, Ariz.

(“Hippie town,” Joe says.

“Of course they make meteorite rings there.”)

And arrived on our doorstep on

Valentine’s Day afternoon.

I opened the package in the kitchen after

Shooing Joe upstairs.

My brother, a groomsman, was there,

And I made him squeeze the ring —

It didn’t give.

Money well-spent.

The small boy, of course,

Needed to see, too.

I gave it to him warily,

And hovered as he tried it on his small thumb

Lest he somehow drop it down the venting system.

He gave it back, apparently approving —

Good, ’cause he’ll be bearing it down the aisle on

May 7 —

And pulled his babysitting uncle to play.

Later, at the restaurant,

Gazing at each other over tea lights,

We ordered our first course off the prix fixe menu,

And Joe said,

“Get out that ring.”

I pulled the box out of my purse and opened it, and we both looked inside.

The ring is heavy and medieval-looking;

The meteorite inlay streaked as if with slate paint brush strokes.

The rose-gold lining shining from inside the ring like an underground lava flow.

Joe put it on his ring finger,

And I thought that it looked,

Against his skin,

Truly like iron.

It wasn’t until Joe went to the bathroom

And I studied the eternal randomness of the

Streaks and swipes,

And ran my finger along the smooth copper-glow lining,

And thought about how I’d

Earned the money

To buy this ring,

And was grateful to be able to do that

For Joe,

That the ring’s billion-year-old

Beauty

Was clarified.

When Joe came back from the bathroom,

I made him put it on his finger one last time.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babe,” I said.