Shattered Mosaics

When you shatter things, they don’t go back together the way they used to. The cracks and edges are misshaped. They can lock and slide back into place, held together by glue, sheer force, or the will to look whole again. From far away they may look good as new, but up close, if you look the right way you can see where it broke apart. You can see where the scars run deep inside its belly. You can see that just because it resembles something you’ve always had; it doesn’t mean by breaking and putting it back together you haven’t changed everything.

When the note fluttered to the floor from the book you picked up, my guts twisted inside of me. “Don’t forget to smile xoxo” a reminder. We glued it back together, but it’s still broken. A reminder, I let someone else in. Even so, you let me back in, you said one more time, one more chance. One more day to get it right.

When we said for “better or worse” I stuck around for the better and high tailed it as soon as the worst crept in. Cowardly I let someone convince me that worst meant I should run, that the worst meant that I deserved better. Better than you, better than a life we built. But who am I to let another person decide what my better was? Who am I to let someone decide that there was better than the last thirteen years? Who was I to decide that there was better than you? There could never be a better than you.

I find myself clawing at the inside of my skin, oh how I hate my skin. Nights spent wishing I could erase the parts of me that are tainted and used now. Pieces of me that are no good. I want to rid the parts of me I didn’t keep only for you like I promised. I want to rid my heart of my memories and the lies. I want to erase them like they never existed in the first place, but I can’t. I can’t take back the parts of me that gave up on the parts of you.

I shattered us. I shattered all the beautiful pieces, that made up a life. I picked it up lifted it above my head and threw it on the ground. I watched the pieces fly and scatter, watched them become scraped and bruised. I ruined them all, and I changed them all, and I made them into something different, something worse.

I have sat amongst those pieces now, full of regret, willing them to fit. I have glued the edges tirelessly, shaved pieces off that I didn’t think belonged anymore and created something new. A misshapen resemblance of a life. A misshapen resemblance of our life. Will it ever be the same?

Will you ever love me that way that you did before? Will you ever love the person I am now? Will you ever forgive my soul from wandering so far from yours it became unrecognizable? Will our love be enough to mold the broken edges back together? Will our love ever be enough to fade the scars to black, hard to see unless this life of ours is glittered out in the sun?

If the sun bleeds through the cracks, will it beautiful when we come out on the other side? Will we look back on a life changed and see the sun coming through and find the beauty in it? Will we look back and see a mosaic of the story of our love?