Wednesday, January 25, 2012

When you break (January 26, 2012)


When you break
little pieces of you
scatter.

If you break with grace
and dignity
and accept that you can break,
then on occasion you can recover
those pieces of you
that shattered
in little nooks of your memories
and corners of your heart.

But if you wait for
a passing breeze
or a casual word
or a careless touch
or a hurtful phrase
to knock you into a wall,
then you shatter into little fragments
and you can never recover
those pieces of you
forever hidden in the darkened corners
where you've left them
to be forgotten.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Three nights ago, we talked about you for the first time. I hadn't ever talked about you before, see, because so long as you were the shadow of a hope in my heart, no one could take away the dream. But somehow in the middle of a terrible quarrel, you came up. I won't say the mention of you calmed me down. Instead, it did something quite different and unprecedented. It sliced through the pure opaque blackness of my blind rage, the one that had left shards of glass on the floor. Maybe I shouldn't tell you that the hands that will guide you, and feed you, and nurture you, and teach you, and learn from you, belong to a singularly neurotic woman. But you must know that this sliver of bright light, which started out only as a small burst, has cast the rest of it in shadow, as the slowly rising sun might cast a warm, near-hopeful glow on the world. This is the first thing I want to tell you. Shinjiru koto no hakanasa wo kimi ga hikari ni kaete yuku...

Monday, January 9, 2012

January 10, 2012


She's going to sweep them away,
the fragments of the cups and plates
I broke last night in anger.
But there will be these tiny shards,
snuggled in the corners,
where no broom can reach them.
They will lie there for a while
until one day I see them and
am reminded
of a distant horror, a fading memory
of hysteria and guilt and shame.
I will shake it off, and pick up
all the shards with my hands,
throw them in the dustbin, and
never see them again.
The cuts on my fingers will heal soon,
the blood will wash away,
and nothing will remain but the distant horror,
a fading memory, and a lesson
buried somewhere deep within.

January 5, 2012


Little Happy Thing
A Terribly Mismatched Poem

You aren't supposed to be sappy
About little tiny things
But this did make me happy,
And so it counts
for a moment memorable enough
for this account.

There was wind my hair
and the ground
swept away as the motorcycle flared.
The sun caught my eye,
already bedazzled
with every moment passing by.

There was the warmth of a hand
on my knee,
and time did stand still
just for that moment, that first
touch, with which
my heart, of the non-anatomical persuasion, did burst.

See, this is quite sappy,
And a little tiny thing...
Why should one touch make you happy,
and make you want to sing,
Of rainbows and sunshine and muffins,
And other happy things?