Kintsugi

Today a giant cardboard box arrived.
Ceramic plates that once were yours,
adorned with hand-drawn faces --

service for six, in theory.
But inside the bubble-wrap,
one plate's in pieces.

You'd shrug and throw it away, but
it's such an obvious metaphor.
I look on eBay but there's no replacement.

There's a space in my china cabinet
where a pair of women's faces should be
in conversation. I try to glue it

though my son rolls his eyes: "Mom, you know
there's no repairing a broken heart."
He's right. It can't be what it used to be.

What can I do but paint broken places
gold? I can't hide my cracks.
All I can do is make them gleam.

 

kintsugi is the Japanese art of adorning broken pottery with gold. I've written about it before. (See also Everything breaks. It's what we do with the pieces that matters at The Wisdom Daily.)