Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I have a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles. They were a gift from adrian_turtle; the letters on them are the initials of my partners (their ordinary names, not their aliases here [1]), since the store didn't have my initials available.

When I was in Montreal, papersky asked why I'd picked those letters, and when I explained, told me I was "ridiculously sentimental." I'll grant the adjective.

A lot of my earrings have some association for me, in one way or another, though most of them are less likely to provoke comment. For example, there's a fine pair of paua shell earrings in the shape of turtles, gifts from Papersky (so associated for me with both her and Adrian), but "why do you have turtle earrings?" is a less likely question than "why those letters?" There are several pairs that I got from elisem at haiku earring parties, and the "Song of the Lesbian Elephants" that I won in a contest Elise ran. I like having those bits of connection, along with the visual pleasure of the earrings and the feeling of them hanging from my ears.

I'm wearing the Scrabble earrings today. On our way up earlier, one of my neighbors noticed them, and asked if they were Scrabble tiles. I said yes, and she asked where I'd gotten them, and then whether there was a meaning behind the letters. I answered "My girlfriend found them in a shop in Boston" for the first, and something like "Yes, I picked them on purpose" for the second. My neighbor didn't ask for more details. I'd evaded because I didn't want to try to explain my poly web to a casual acquaintance in the time it would take the elevator to get to the fifth floor, but if she'd persisted, I would have. If I weren't somewhat open to explanations, I'd have said "a friend," though "girlfriend" is ambiguous in that sort of context.

[1] Two of my partners share an initial.