Broken In

When I was crazy,
I did crazy things;
I’m not going to say
I wasn’t and didn’t.

I was offended by
all those small fissures,
synapses, gaps between
tectonic plates, moving.

How dare they move?
With enough baling wire,
I could fix every place
that was cracked,

hold it all together,
keep it still so that
my children could
never fall off

the face of the earth.
What’s crazy is that
I’ve given it up now,
the whole notion of

fixing; my children
hold on however
they can. Every day,
they watch me open

the same broken gift,
the only one I ever
get, the only one
any of us need.

For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

Broken In, for Open Link Night