Viplav Saini
Kintsugi

1.

 

My earliest memory is letting go of a white ceramic mug (the kind favored by wedding caterers in India in the eighties) and watching it fall one story to crash on the cement floor of the family that lived below us. I remember being aware that I was only a child and would not be held responsible.

 

2.

 

the first marriage always breaks—

 

expose the fault line, glut the fracture with gold

 

lacquer from lac, from Sanskrit

meaning many, or resin

secreted sap or gum

 

gham from Urdu

meaning sorrow

like grief

 

chin meets floor

 

the jaw unsettles

 

skin meets chin—

splits—

 

the seam shimmers

to gilded fractal

 

bowl meets floor

 

the mind unclenches

 

the whole

 

the pattern holds

 

where does it

 

hurt    here

 

the shatter

 

here,

        here

 
Found In Volume 51, No. 01
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Viplav Saini
About the Author
Viplav Saini teaches economics at New York University. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, and Massachusettes Review.