Katrina Kaye

Like glass, he shattered.

A thousand ragged pieces
slipped away from me
in the darkness.

Tiny shards of his existence
scattered into cracks and carpet,
lost until light returns
to reflect brightness into them.

But he is not waiting for the dawn,
not waiting to be put back together.
Slowly the debris settles in,
fading and returning,
like a person trying to hold on to sleep.
He stopped resisting.

And I can’t find him anymore,
not when I walk barefoot
on the kitchen floor,
not when I lie bare backed
on his Persian rug,
looking for the fragments of clear, sharp life
that once built a man.

He has been sucked up, swept up,
dug up, systematically removed.
I never imagined he’d be missed.

“Shard” is previously published in A Scattering of Imperfections (2009).