you hold me together.
you paper over the cracks
in my head, in my heart
and keep them
until they can hold by themselves.
when I’m at my most shattered
you pick up the pieces,
carefully reassemble them –
nestling each shard
next to its neighbor,
pressing all the sharp-edged curves
back into place –
until my fault lines are all
filled in with gold.
so after you rescue my broken husk
from the trash heap that I
threw myself on in despair,
I’ll be all the more beautiful
for having been so
utterly destroyed.
R. Brookes McKenzie 