I dropped the mug It hit the tile floor

I dropped the mug. It hit the tile floor.

The break was clean, a perfect line—

the kind of break you see before,

when something breaks and won't align.

I stared at it. Ten minutes. Still.

The two pieces, each intact,

the handle and the body. Will

they ever be the same? The fact

is, even if I glue it back,

the ghost will stay—the faint line

where it broke, where it cracked,

the break that marks it every time.

My grandmother had held this mug.

Now it was in two.

I couldn't move. I didn't shrug.

The break was real. It's always true

that broken things don't really heal.

They just get held together again.

The break is real. The break is real.

And you remember where it's been.