Shattered
There is a soft tinkle,
deafening in the silence,
as the last shard of happiness falls to the ground.
It took only an instant
for the joyous glow in which we had wrapped ourselves to be destroyed;
An idle thought
wandering through a silence held an instant too long,
An innocent question,
and it was done.
Let the thought pass,
and I undermine all that we are
And so it is caught.
And in that heartbeat
where truths collide,
the beauty is shattered.
Fragments fall to the floor in slow motion:
Warm embraces, soft moans, shy smiles,
Gratitude and love and safety
in a still-fragile pile on the floor
and behind it all, revealed by the destruction,
the sharp white starkness of our worst selves:
You, desperate to hide from yourself
Me, unable to evade the spectre of perfection.
So now,
alone, cold, and exposed
I pick up and examine one last fragment of a beautiful day
then let it crash back to the floor, spent,
And wonder where I can step
to escape this field of fragments.
February 13, 2002