Disassembly

Armin Vit, from "Dark and Fleshy: The Color
of Top Grossing Movies," 2004

It’s for all the world as if we took a sharpened hoe
to a milk snake, mistaking it for its venomous near-
twin and, undoing what ordinary miracles made
it whole, left it disassembled, bleeding, in pieces.
For all the world. How have we so broken, forked
a path in no direction other than towards chaos,
tohu wa bohu, pelting pell-mell into the darkest
places we can find? No. Not all darkness. Today I
saw something glittering on the basement floor:
a rhinestone or a diamond, catching what light it
could, unfolding it, tossing it back to dry my tears.
That flickering transparent spectra, no bigger than
a cigarette ash, staining the dim concrete with joy.