I Am Your Winged Torso of Eros
“Everything breakable in you has been broken . . .”
— Daniel Hall
Archival air belies the dirt they drew me from.
My wings lie crumbled in that ground still.
(Fingers marked unknown in a Reykjavik museum,
one ear completes a French recruiter’s stall.)
Fluorescence pours its green on all of us.
Why then return to face this embarrassment
of cracks and absence, blind luck and loss?
You’ve got it wrong (in sneakers and jeans, the docent’s
sneeze, the guidebook’s backward fold): Let me go
into the world: part saffron-dusted swallowtail,
part fountain jazz, wine and laughlines. The stone
heart erodes, forgotten as a pearl in its fossil shell.
Take, instead, the light sighs . . . I am broken,
yes, but broken like bread — a piece for everyone.