My chapbook, Self-portrait in Bronze, charting my first year of sobriety is now available to download and read through my Patreon. You can become a patron here.
Below is a poem from the collection.
I Will Keep Broken Things
after Alice Walker
By broken I mean me & by keep I mean hold,
I mean stay alive, I mean finally acknowledge
that all of this, has been for me, no one else,
for once. I am the ghost and the woman
in morning light. I am a jubilant midnight
and the insects crawling between cracks
in the house. I am blooming petals and shedding
every skin I have worn in the last eight years.
Consider me kintsugi. A broken thing
remastered in gold; this is the dream,
and I am working on my patience,
to file each edge until smooth, place
the pieces in new ways each time, life
becoming art, and pour molten glitter
into the rivulets of change, be remade
as a keepsake, as something others would hope
to hold.
*kintsugi - also known as kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum