“How often”, she asked me the night before
“Do you think it’s okay to fall apart?”
We live in a “break it, you pay” kind of culture
A handle falls off of
A coffee mug and suddenly- the entire thing is useless. We lean to sweep evidence beneath the rug, throw broken pieces into a paper bag and never think about them again.
The Japanese knew another way. They mended their broken vases with gold, aggrandized the sharp corners and turned shards of broken pottery into basins that hold light
Together.
But here, there’s no room for mistakes.
We give up so easily- on broken toys, snapped piano legs, on each other- and we make believe that even out tongues are bulletproof, as if we are stronger than what these fragile bones can take.
We don’t forgive our broken bowls. We don’t learn to piece them back together. We trip over our own skeletons.
And sweep them back beneath our skin; collect the splattering of our sorrows and flush them down the toilet like
Secrets. Were so ashamed of that which fumbles and falls through our fingers that we forget that
There’s another way; another way instead of going through our days buying coffee at five A.M. And f---ing above the covers while rattling and spilling over, our insides bleeding from all the damn glass.
We were never taught that
By the end our lives, we didn’t have to be made of a hundred million cracks. We were never taught that we could have it differently, that we could piece ourselves back together with light,
That our bodies could burn from the inside out.
1. Do you believe the poem has more strength in its contemporary appeal, or its message?
2. Is the theme clear? Perhaps too clear? Why so?
3. The use of profanity and explicit material is striking in artistry of all kinds. In which way does it strike you in this example, and do you feel it brought more or took away from the poem?
4. How would you describe the flow of the piece?
5. Would you recommend this poet based on this one work, as first impressions go?
