I used to think the break was the end of the story –
a heap of porcelain shards on the kitchen floor,
white dust rising like a ghost
from the spot where the glittering
stone-figure toppled. But now
I am learning the chemistry of gold.
It requires a steady hand and a lack of shame.
It requires looking at the jagged edge
where I once stood and crumbled
and then saying:
This is where the light will go.
The seams are not hidden.
They are thick, metallic rivers running
rivulets around my ribs and palms.
They map the night I left their driveway,
the morning I stopped measuring the water,
the moment I chose the messy scratch of the pen
over a spotlighted solo.
I am a woman held together by what I survived.
Every crack a seam of gold poured by my own hand,
cooled by the lapping water of the bay,
tempered by a love that does not ask for the clay to be seamless.
I am more beautiful for having been broken.
I am stronger at the weld.