"Waiting for the Artist"

for the TK girls


She stands beside me,
Waiting for her ride.
Soft downy hair on her
Arms and cheeks
Catch sunlight.
She clutches at her belly,
Hunches over, face a grimace.
"Ohh," she moans, and her eyes
Become strangely familiar --
Mirrors of a sort, they show me
A girl of yesterday.
A girl of sorrows.
A girl who knew too much
And felt too little.
Her eyes remind me of that girl,
Whose body I once occupied,
Whose wasted frame I lived within --
If you could call it living.
"I'm so FULL," this girl
Laments to me now, and I
Smile with empathy. "I know," I say --
Which is to say, I remember.
"It will go away," I assure her,
And she appears to want to believe.
Full, she says, and I have to wonder --
Full of . . . ?
Of fear, of dread, or shame?
Of a tentative, undying hope?
Of a will to go on,
To push, to trust, to try?
This too, I remember, this mosaic
Of emotion -- broken pieces of a life
Once believed to have been whole --
Of a heart, a soul, a self.
Broken pieces, waiting --
As my girl waits for her ride --
Waiting for the Artist to pick them up
And lie them down again
In all new places, with all new purpose --
Waiting to be arranged into something
Even more beautiful
Than they might have been
If they had never been broken at all.