I am trying to learn
how to give and foster forgiveness in a body
that wants none of it.
-Sierra DeMulder
Yesterday I bought a new phone screen protector,
because the one I have has a few cracks.
The new one, although its sticker was still on
was covered in cracks, more cracks
than the one I had before:
cracks running down it like rain down a window,
a hundred streams maybe more.
But even still, I peeled off
the old cracked screen protector,
stuck on the new, more cracked one.
I bought it, after all.
I wonder if I’m becoming more forgiving,
if I’m seeing the world not as a set
of problems now, but as a series of
beauties, one stacked upon another
like the way the cracks splay out
like a pleated dancing skirt
that twirls and lifts in wind,
spins around the dancer, splays,
transforms, becomes something
more like a parachute.
I had my new phone only a week when I managed to get a crack in the screen