The Scorpion Paperweight

© Mike Dubisch

It’s a little epoxy dome with its base lined with felt. The felt has grown tattered but still holds so that it places softly and does not slip. There is dust on the dome which I brush off. I can’t help but think of the epoxy as cloudy or smoky from the years, but in truth, I don’t recall if it was ever clearer. Inherited from my child self, I have so few items from that time left, even after having carried some with me for decades.

If you’d asked, I would have said I thought this was one of those things, something worthless but special to me, thoughtlessly thrown into the goodwill box during our last flight. The move loomed and only I could make it happen, a colossal act of will, and nothing I owned, nothing I’d accomplished meant anything in the face of this. Books I had once treasured went into the box. The two halves of a geode I’d found on the ground when my family lived in Colorado, a round rock I thought just might be filled with treasure, and with my father’s help I broke it in half with a hammer and chisel and there it was, a core of purple-blue gemstones. “Really? It’s not very impressive.” she said, and the rock went into the box.

Within the epoxy dome is a scorpion. It looks shiny, golden hued. I can’t remember when I last looked closely at it, so I take off my glasses and examine the creature through the smoky substance. With my near microscopically focused nearsightedness, some of the details are sharp, others seemed at that moment blunt, and few of the details look suspiciously like seams from a mold. Is it a replica, a model? A plastic toy sprayed with gold and sealed deep inside amber plastic to create an illusion, a trick, this thing just a cheap tchotchke that would fool only a child? Had I carried a fake thing around all these years?

I put it down, then pick it up again, polishing the smooth dome once more. I look again. The scorpion’s tail, which curves up near the top of the dome, ends in a pin sharp point. I can see tiny, serrated edges on its claws. I am re-convinced of the authenticity of this memento mori, because it’s important that this lifelong companion be an actual dead arachnid, rather than just some toy.