I've lost a sense of myself I didn't know I could lose:

Somewhere between sidewalk cracks and fallen leaves is my entire being,

in a puddle after winter rain is myself.

Somewhere in the kisses I gave or between the heat in my stomach and the ice of my toes is my definition.

In the stillness after a clear piano cord I left something behind.

I was a puzzle made of pieces that have now splintered and broken

shattered and dissolved

cracked and faded into

watercolor memories that can't form themselves into words, into

shards of muscle and heart that fell from the butcher's block, into

mud in other people's hands to be molded like clay or silly putty.

Irreplaceable morsels that have been plucked out

I have lost a sense of myself I didn't know I could lose.

Snatched up, chewed up, spit out.

I am left holding soggy newspaper, watching ink bleed from the page into my hand and praying it can somehow find its way back through my skin

seep to my bones to mend the fractures I did not ask for,

but deep blue fingertips can't untie the knots in my stomach

or loosen the noose I have made from the lies I coiled around my neck;

I am not fine.

I've lost the part of myself I did not know I could lose, and I would suffer the blood of restoration if I could only find the shards,

but they clink in pockets with pennies and rattle in junk drawers with forgotten bolts and bite fingers in pools of still water and crumble to dust when stepped on.