china shop

When the china shop is built around the bull

you are forced to make way,

push porcelain against walls, bend slivers of shelves around her,

and focus on your own breath,

because when the teacups come clattering down

it will be due to your own carelessness.

There is a sweetness in loving the thing that is tearing you apart,

when silence is ground like ceramic under pounding hooves,

pretty words lined up like so many dinner plates,

made more precious by the knowledge that one day these, too, will fall.