Kintsugi

(A Japanese tradition of fixing broken pottery with gold.)

Six centuries have passed
And you still hear the echo
Of the smash, chipped and broken
Shards cutting the air.

You were history then,
Atoms before ideas,
Before cells crashed and you
Came out of the womb head first

You broke once, maybe twice,
By the age of two, once in the lungs,
Your mother was shaking the cot
And couldn’t find your breath

The doctors pulled you back
together, stitches and scars and kisses,
Golden ones for little stars,

And then you broke again, seeing Angels
on the ceiling, Your grandma’s house, where this time
I imagine them fixing you with pearls from their deepest
ocean, and you dangling your feet from the clam

you break, over and over,
like a teacup under the hooves of a
Mongolian raid, ground into dust, churned earth
And shattered pieces.

Six centuries have passed
And the cracks still show,
Gold in the rising sun, but in the dark,
they are something else.