A porcelain doll
Shatters when she hits the floor
Only shards are left
So she mends herself again,
Again, again, and again.

birds alight upon
sutures of a licked-thin night—
tree branch at sunrise.

Our inner demons hide behind
The cracks that face forward
Seasoned by dungeons and darkness
They fill in the holes and cover up the crevices

Soon, my soul will be completely shattered
As your powerful glare becomes the last water drop
This ocean can take
And when the vessel of emotion breaks, it breaks

I am ready
to ring your rib

around my wrist
in triumph—

the faintest of relics    
enliven me. My lips

still layered
as in the night you lost them.

I hope to hammer  
your heart

& stuff its soil
in the sutures

of your skull;
I want to call that

the shadow to
kintsugi;

I want our memories never
to seep; to set

them up for decryption.
Unloving is a study—

consider an archaeologist’s
tentative hands

demystifying an artifact
once treasured for its secret

& leaving no spots
behind.

Broken into a million pieces,
living in this fear to break into a million more,
Making sure to tread with caution,
making sure I don't scream when I step on the thorns,
making sure I couldn't recall the last time I felt pain and mourned.
But someone felt my void inside,
Someone taught me there are no mistakes that cannot be healed
She taught me “healing exists to connect and not to perfect beings”.

I have found someone that makes me adore these fragments in me.
She is an alchemist working with gold,
healing those imperfections,
not hiding them in deep,
shaping them with trust,
molding them to fit back in,
trying to restore me with her palms,
blessing her magic on me
with that sacred art of Kintsugi.

Now the healed scars are in the shape of roses and daffodils,
now the vulnerabilities look gorgeous in me.
Her love is bridging my broken pieces,
now those lost and empty pieces are looking vivid.
Kissing those palms which made me believe,
breathing under her serenity,
now I felt peace in my reality.

Every imperfection seems unique to me.
Fragility, strength, and beauty,
now seem almost synonymous to one another.
To the one who rooted this resilience in me,
you mean the world to me.

A butterfly flutters
Through the breeze
The wind healing its broken wings