Friday, November 25, 2011

Pieces

There are pieces of me all over the world.
All over the country in different places
with different people. The different people
hold these pieces. Some have cherished them,
some have thrown them away. Some don't
know what to do with them, some take them
out and hold them for a little while and put
them away. Some pieces are large, some pieces
are quite small. Some pieces are incredibly
tiny, and it seems at times that pieces of my
heart, my body, my mind, my soul add up
to being more than that which is me, that which
still breathes, and talks.

That makes new friends and leaves more
pieces and doesn't try to catch them as they
fall, but lets them fall like leaves or pine cones
or lets them fly like seed pods and hope that they
land some place safely. And of the me that I am,
and of these pieces which I can no longer claim
in three cites now, I am present. In so many lives
they wonder where I am, where I've gone, why it
seems so appropriate only to see me in passing,
to say hi or just pass on by. As if I still lived there,
as if I were always there among them, my friends,
and what a joy when someone on some day is
carrying a piece of me and they embrace me
and they try to find where exactly the piece they
have came from, and put it back where it belongs
so I can feel it again before letting them take it
back to go on their merry way with yet another
little piece that's all theirs, so that now they may
have two.

And when I come home I am alone again, my
remaining pieces safe, and I can't count how many
there are, and I can't count how many have been
lost, broken, stolen, or given away. But I can
count these people who I call my friends and lovers,
who I still love who are spread out in so many places
who must feel some change int he air pressure
when I come back, who perhaps reach out to touch
me and hope that i have not left yet again.

I am not selfish with myself, and I give my pieces away
freely, but how nice it would be I wonder to have all
of these pieces in one place, not all mine but that belong
to someone else who can count them all, who knows where
all of them belong. Someone, who keeps them all
together, big and small in a cupboard like a glass menagerie
of fragments that all fit together just right, and some how
add up to make another me, a better me, a sweeter me.
And how nice if I could hold their pieces, some one who's
been there the whole time, who knows that their pieces
are safe with me.

And some times, when we come together,
all our places where our missing parts belong fit together
just right, or all of my people in all of my places come to
see me all at one time and put me back together piece by
piece just to see what I would look like.

But you live the life that there is to be lived.
You let more pieces fall away, and perhaps if you think
of it, you can take a picture, or write your name on
a wall that says "I was here once, and a piece of me will
never leave."

No comments:

Post a Comment