Kintsugi - Mended With Gold

Broken, this aged vessel fractured by fate in matter and mind careworn and cracked like creeping veins of window frost ... (but colder in my solitude, I surmise) Oh, but wholly blessed on the surface, really no furrows or folds or wrinkly crows hardly a dozen gray hairs, but for goatee' ... (winter taking hold there, evidently the once fiery and fervently experienced lips put to the frigid air of the disinterested and forsaken) Too proud, really, that I look twenty years my lesser for it reaps naught but envy ... (when I yearn for naught but love) Yes, the porcelain facade still reflects the sun but ONLY that, then back to whence it came the warmth seeps not, and oh the splintered shell within shards as sharp and crimped as British wit whether by bent or happenstance or horrid folly ... (they are as defined as they are hidden as black as they are white as cursed as they are blessed) A hundred and more, they are a memory, each a pain, a tragedy, a misstep, a ravaged heart given fully returned with but a wish and a wave but you see, those cracks and breaks and chips all carefully mended ... with gold ... (caring friends, exquisite joys, profound experience, loving family hope, faith, renewed self-respect, and a million little things that may pass others unnoticed but to me, are the lifeblood of existence) They fill the seams with the most wonderful precious metal and that broken, shattered soul is healed made whole by what is truly valuable and lasting far more formidable and beautiful and priceless ... (with the wisdom of breakage and healing and all the myriad lessons learned in the process) Than it ever was ... (than I ever was) Before. Submitted on April 4, 2020 To the "Strand Choice Z, Any Form, Any Theme" Poetry Contest Brian Strand, Sponsor. ( For those not familiar with the ancient Art of Kintsugi, please take a moment to check it out - it represents a model for life that is very special - strengthening through adversity. Here's a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi )