Mischief light fills his eyes
and he can’t believe his ears.
His father is giving him permission
to smash a plate on the concrete driveway.

Mum’s picked up a nice line in Crown Lynn retro plates
in a second-hand shop in Timaru
and she’s culling hard.
Tiny chip on the underside of the rim, felt but unseen,
and it’s unsentimentally consigned
to the dustbin of history
or at least some anonymous landfill.

Dad sees an opportunity for secret boy business,
sanctioned vandalism. “Don’t tell Mum. She wouldn’t approve.”

That boy’s blue eyes are
charged with adrenalin
when that white innocence shatters
in a porcelain explosion.

“Do you feel a little bit Greek?” Dad asks
and is met with incomprehension.

 Andrew M. Bell

Dear imperfect me,
You are your own, just be.
You wrestle with insecurity,
that you can't settle peacefully.
Dear imperfectly,
The way you are is how you're meant to be.

Don't close your eyes and pretend you can't see,
Cos when you do, you're missing free
dom, and the richness; vibrancy,
of what it means to be living, see!

  Dear imperfect me,
The devil wants you to be devastatingly,
lonely, to isolate yourself from me,
to run around, head cut off, me.
But dear imperfect me,
there's no such thing as superiority,
it's just what we do when we are achingly,
small inside, and out, dumb wittingly,
disconnected from reality.
Such a waste; insecurity, obligatory shame, we accept begrudgingly.

  Dear imperfect me,
Can we try something new, happily?
Can we live more peacefully,
seeing ourselves progressively?
As beauty wrapped, uniquely!
As unsentimentally evolving.

  Dear imperfectly perfect me,
You are, you are, who you're meant to be,
For now, until you're not; key!
Grab this truth wholeheartedly.