Sharded Past

Someday I want a home
With a façade where a bit of style
A trace of frustration
Embedded in a matrix of futility
Fuses to make a smiling face
For an inviting home.

In the backyard would be some plants,
And shrubbery that diffuse green
Eyelashed by some palms at the edge
To look like a beautiful eye from the sky.

Here on weekends I’ll labour
Over the vast collection of glass, my past.
Bit by bit, I’ll chisel, hammer
And break it into shards,
And strew it on the yard.

When guests go
And I return to me
I’ll cure the hangover
From prickly highs of small chatter, easy praise
Meaningless exchange of hollowness
That so invigorates meetings.

Then, I’ll walk barefoot
Over the mosaic of my sharded
Past, in my backyard.
Come back home,
With my private version
Of a fertility rite over,
Wipe with gauze the traceries of old blood,
And make my foot ready
For fresh prints, on somebody else’s
Private beach.

Nobody who measures footprints
Will ever know shards cut
Even thick skin.