You are the black eye
I got in a fight when I was younger,
the empty space of a recently pulled tooth.
You are the almost empty soap bottle,
an itch I can’t quite reach.
You are the sound of church bells
on Sunday morning and the smell
of burnt bacon
after the cook got distracted.
You are the cliche of a poem,
the line people talk about.
You are the hum of a steady drumbeat
in the background of song.
You are broken,
and in pieces,
nearly a mosaic,
and you are everything an artist needs
to paint a masterpiece.