Kintsugi Redux

👂🏼

Shards shattered

reassembled

melded in gold

molten filling shaping

trying holding the form memoried

as it once was

as it once held survival masks

as it must be restored reformed

to be who I’ve always been

drawing the shapes moulded to fit

lies that told so often

again and

again

and

again

reify what isn't

bury what is

so deep

deep

than

perception can penetrate

there are pieces

there is the lowliest of metals

there is infinite fragility of …

what?

a glancing possibility of

a different reassembly of

a shape so unfamiliar

that it's broken reflection

of a memory so distant and

hidden and

past

gone

lost

and never

found

might never have been

yet

somehow

these pieces

shattered shards

dissembled

cloaked

do can may

flow together into a whole

terrifying

somehow familiar

like a voice

never before heard

that’s something always known

this new form pieces placed

without thought

but by some almost lost almost memory of touch

held in fingers and lips that

without thought or conscious awareness

without effort with more pain and strain and sweat and fear than

than

almost than

has taken these whole life years

to hold a construct made of less than nothing

in place

instead

a new old new being

held in new old new Kintsugi imperfect perfection

somewhere left

lying

a sloughed skin

made of lies

repeated so often

so long

so very long

they so nearly became

immutable

that liquid gold

not yet set

barely holds this

this old new old this

shape of being

together

infinitely fragile

but so very strong

it might even

I might even

survive

until

tomorrow

31st July 2024 After my 2017 poem, “Kintsugi People ” . Thanks to Feline for the gift of a re-imagined

Kintsugi; the phrase “the lowliest of metals” is from Peter Blegvad’s song, “Gold”