Broken bowl, my carelessness.
My faithful hands held it—came apart,
jagged tooth bit off its rim
lost in the soap…Gift

bowl, three fat lemons, &
as if someone had licked it, cobalt
then scratched-in curlicues
…right

I’ll hide it, get another,
somehow fix it with a note
about how sorry I am, I feel.
I find nothing except

perhaps a very different Moroccan bowl
not right. Nothing comes to me.
Nothing is right.
So

by now I have stolen your sorrow
keeping this a secret from you, and
when it’s obvious, you’re furious
your anger blazing, you left,
taking your anger around the block.
Then, and how we throw it at each other,
shards of a broken pot, each
of us with a piece of its

shattered whole, you
a flower, me a quiet fruit.
Should I be the one,
admit it’s cracked, hopeless?
You? You’d sister it, glue,
anything, obviously, like
an ancient pot…I guess.
How might I put it

ever so carefully, out
with all the others, fields of them, sobbing
probably, brothers, broken folks,
the whole lot of them. And us.