I am a broken wine glass.

I remember you very clearly, your soft and supple voice.

The way it used to whisper to me, the way it sounded when you sang,

the thing you used to call me: a “lovely mess”.

But I am not that simple wine glass anymore. I am not a mere

wine glass with a few light purple stains and a handful of cracks.

When you would gaze at me on the modest coffee table ,

the hazy amber light softly flowing through my thin glass body,

you would count my stains and cracks, run your soft warm fingers

over them, and after, you would say: “They’re not that bad; they make you a lovely mess.”

I was your ‘lovely mess’.                                                                        

I am shattered now, the multitude of dark red wine stains clearly visible

on the hundreds of pieces of me. I have been poorly put together

with Super Glue and Scotch Tape, but I always seem to fall apart again,

pieces of me falling to the hard wood of the coffee table.

My base occasionally wobbles when too many pieces have fallen from one side,

and I am unbalanced. I finally collapsed one day, the pieces of my body

cascading to my base, the falling glass a shimmering sound in the dusty silence

of the house.

I am shattered because you can no longer call me your lovely mess.

I am heavily stained because I can no longer hear your voice, eroding the darkness of my past.

I am sitting in eternal brokenness because I know I can never call myself anyone’s again.

I am a broken wine glass.