Snowglobes

Once upon a time someone told me I was broken.

I took that moment and encased it in a snowglobe,

a glass dome on a pedestal, figurines frozen in time.

I grew up, but the world inside the snowglobe stayed the same.

It sat on a shelf gathering dust, until one day

I dared to take it off its dusty shelf, wipe away the dust,

and shake it, until the words leapt off the ground and swirled

like asbestos snowflakes, poison. I translated them

into ink, turned their venom into tattoos

that I imprinted on notebooks instead of skin.

I outgrew the body, outgrew the snowglobe.

The notebooks were filled.

The shelves expanded to make room for new memories, new globes,

some words less poisonous than others.

But the original globe still remains,

on the highest shelf where I almost can't reach it.

It is the snowglobe from which all others are born.

My poems are innovations, and the memory

is necessity, the mother.

Some days it makes me angry, other days it makes me sad.

Sometimes I revel in it, the knowledge

that I am shattered beyond repair,

and might as well live with the pieces.

Once upon someone told me I was broken,

but I could not let it go.

So I ensnared it in glass and injected it with meaning,

shook it until I could make it make sense.

Now I am frozen inside it, watching the world move on without me,

while I remain stationary,

shaking the walls until a new word

falls into my lap

waiting to be woven

into the narrative of my pain,

and I wait alongside the words

for my chance to be released,

expressed, created, made real. I dream of taking myself off this shelf

and setting my childhood free

to find the snowglobes

I never got to see.

My name is Broken,

and I live in a snowglobe,

catching fake snowflakes on my tongue

and swallowing the stale words

until I spit out new ones.