I guess that as time goes on, we leave parts of ourselves behind.
Sometimes it’s like a limb being hacked off;
splintered, torn, and bloody,
and other times it’s a slow melt,
a fire that is impossible to quench…
and rarely, it’s an easing, world-shattering relief
which snuffs out the pain of memory.
I’m all chopped into pieces.
I’m left in Amherst, in Wichita, and in Bloomington.
I left behind the child who loved to play in the roadside gutters when it rained,
who loved the smell of sunburnt tomatoes and fresh dill,
and who still knew how to balance her world upon her confident shoulders.
We get used to it.
Every cut and slash hurts less,
and the parts are regrown, in a way…
But it’s never the same.
Regrown like cells in a lab,
patched together like a tattered childhood quilt,
a shattered piece of china that was carefully,
too precisely, taped and glued back together.
I suppose that’s what defines us.
Pieces, sections, projections of what was once whole.
Presenting our eager eyes,
so bright and alight,
to the world,
whose face has also been too tarnished to notice.
But that’s okay.
Because it’s the beauty and humor and difference
that comes out of broken
which makes us whole again,
steady in the chokehold of the world.