Mending

Eastnor Pottery, "More Clay Babies," 2009

I could stitch words together on the aesthetics
of a scar, but I’d rather tell you how my ad hoc
kintsukuroi looked nothing like those wabi-sabi
cups, sagacious and gold-veined, sitting quietly
all over Pinterest. The green glass Virgin, broken
in two, didn’t cut me when I brushed an alcohol
soaked swab along her sharp edges. She took a
ribboning of epoxy and gold leaf in good spirits,
holding still while the mix set, but I worked too
fast, striving to set the fix with the artless grace
of a Japanese master potter, achieving only the
artless part. It’s right, I suppose, that the mend
looks as if a five-year-old did it, since the child I
am wanted so very much to heal the keepsake.
A slower mending is forgiveness—of myself, for
my unskillfulness, my attachment to an empty
vessel full of grace, the pointer to what's gone.