Kintisugi

Kintisugi: (n.) To repair with gold; The art of repairing metal with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

I remember the scar that traversed your stomach;

that braided beast evidence of the events that had transpired.

I remember winter nights when you sat shivering in the dark;

brooding in the corner with your white walls and milky sadness.

Cool, pungent sweat punctuated the ridges of your rippled forehead.

You told me you felt lost and afraid-- like you were disappearing.

They sucked the life from your lungs, and now you were left with

scar tissue and moon craters.

In the summer, we filled mason jars with our sweat;

peeling sunburns from each others tenting shoulders;  

digging so deep, secrets burrowed under our fingernails till our hands smelt like soil.

Nights were distinctly bittersweet--

bloody noses, abrasive chlorine, and strawberry popsicles.

That scar still remained.

Spring lilted in on milky, tender wings,

and flowers began to bloom from that lovely crater in your stomach.

For the first time in years, vines climbed the battered concrete walls of your abdomen;

twisting and turning through your hair.

You told me you felt whole.

Those vines with their sanguine flowers held you together.

That November, the leaden autumn rain carried away every last ephemeral blossom.

We tried to fill that naked, ever expanding abyss with shards of the fluorescent harvest moon; frantically digging up forlorn, uneven heaps like sunburnt children on the beach.

Our iron shovels rusted into our slivered hands;

immoralizing our plight in stone.

This winter, we will sew shards of glass into our soft, rippled bellies

and tell ourselves that we are whole.

And when the spring returns,

we will lovingly welcome cumulonimbus dandelion tufts, and thick braided vines, and even their scars.

Our wrists will bandage.

Miles of desolate craters will fill.

This is how we heal.