Shards
Shards
Last week, I accidentally broke my favorite bowl, a treasured birthday gift from an old friend. Made by a potter in the UK, the glossy black base was surrounded by a symmetrical garland of rich green leaves under a rim of tightly packed, intricate ceramic roses. My description can’t do it justice, and I’ll never have another like it. It was one of those perfect objects that sometimes comes into your life, and suddenly it was shattered in an instant.
I can’t even blame the loss on a random twist of fate, which would be easier to bear than the clumsy brush of my own elbow. I salvaged some shards of the intact white roses and put them on the windowsill, a reminder of the wabi-sabi nature of life.
But it made me think about other things I’ve broken in my life through carelessness or selfishness. An emotional rupture between my mother and me, which I’m sure she forgave, but I still regret. Times I let my children down. Friendships that withered through neglect. We’re human. We break things. We hurt people. We’re changed irrevocably, but we pick up the pieces, salvage what we can, and live with the patches and scars and cracks in the beautiful wreckage of life.
Nikki Hardin is a writer of stories, musings, and memories. Her poetry has been published in Riverteeth Journal. She was the founder and publisher of skirt!, a monthly women’s magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. You can reach her at nikki@thedailynikki.com.