(Poem inspired by Kintsugi, “golden joinery”, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with gold, silver, or platinum. It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.)
In our broken times
we don’t see beauty,
Only flaws and
endless darkness
Stretching out before us.
We wrap ourselves round in guarded defence,
Hoping no one will see our cracks and broken edges but
Crying out to be seen,
To matter to someone else.
We cannot always find the words we need
To tell another how we feel
Even if we could find the courage to say that we are lost.
Yet in brokenness we must learn to share
The messy pieces of our lives and find that
Others have their broken pieces too.
There we learn that being broken isn’t weakness,
It is part of who we are.
Each piece a tiny part of the whole,
Our story broken up in parts,
But slowly coming back to whole.
The cracks may still be visible yet each reminds us where we were.
The cracks will rejoin and where the
Light seeps through we start to see the gold.
Written by Cath Hill.
