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carose59The Shelf of Broken Things
.
The day Pat died, a vase I had given her broke.
Not spontaneously; I was shifting something so the paramedics could get in, and it fell off a shelf. It wasn’t a sign or anything, just a thing.
It had a dove on it.
I still have it, the pieces unput-together.
I also have a perfume decanter, a gaudy, pretty thing I bought for Pat because it reminded me of something she liked.
It was broken when my house was burglarized.
And then there are the small glass animals with missing legs or tails, loved even with their sharp edges where a smooth grace should be.
And then I have a unicorn whose appendages are held together with a combination of Elmer’s glue and tissue paper and a little silver paint. His body shattered the very day I got him, but it’s over forty years later and he’s still here, being mine.
I don’t give up easy.
I have a lot of broken things. Sometimes I think I should put up a shelf to keep them on, all the beautiful, broken things, living together on a high, safe shelf with a ledge around it so they can’t fall again.
Even though we all fall again. I want to keep them safe.
.
The day Pat died, a vase I had given her broke.
Not spontaneously; I was shifting something so the paramedics could get in, and it fell off a shelf. It wasn’t a sign or anything, just a thing.
It had a dove on it.
I still have it, the pieces unput-together.
I also have a perfume decanter, a gaudy, pretty thing I bought for Pat because it reminded me of something she liked.
It was broken when my house was burglarized.
And then there are the small glass animals with missing legs or tails, loved even with their sharp edges where a smooth grace should be.
And then I have a unicorn whose appendages are held together with a combination of Elmer’s glue and tissue paper and a little silver paint. His body shattered the very day I got him, but it’s over forty years later and he’s still here, being mine.
I don’t give up easy.
I have a lot of broken things. Sometimes I think I should put up a shelf to keep them on, all the beautiful, broken things, living together on a high, safe shelf with a ledge around it so they can’t fall again.
Even though we all fall again. I want to keep them safe.