On my Instagram page (@elizabeth_ee), I’ve been doing this thing that I call Tiny Poem Sunday. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but every Sunday I post a short 4 stanza poem. My first few posts were based off of a poem I wrote while sitting on the floor of the Tate Modern on my last day in London. By breaking it up into small individual poems that could stand alone, it turned into something much better than the original. I’ve now pieced it back together, and I thought I would post it here. I hope you enjoy it. Here is a broken puzzle of a poem about breaking.
Your hands are stronger
than they look.
You touch my cheek
and it cracks
sending flowering vines across my face
in place of your fingerprints,
Because I am fragile.
I always have been.
My glass fingertips
shatter a little bit
every time I hold a book of poems
or your hand.
I am a holding pen for beauty
and I will soon understand
that I have been seeing myself
through your small eyes.
Now begin to glimpse the truth of my reflection
in the pieces of glass that fall from my skin,
Because I am so much weaker
than a mountain or a word.
I am the delicate, crumbling parts of them.
But the truth is, I would rather be a thousand pieces
breaking away in your hands
than leave no proof that we ever touched.
I was here for so long,
But now I’m beginning to feel
like building a palace out of my body
and going home to it.
I will thank you for the flowering cracks
you left in my windows
And you will let me go.
I will be left standing,
amazed at the strength of my own legs.
Watch me as I walk away.
You’ll see the back of my head as a mountain, resolute.
Only I’ll know the lovely truth of my cracking porcelain bones.