17 March 2018 – “Two Truths, One Lie” at Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN
I welcomed the broken glass on the cloudy June morning to my home. Just like any other guest or visitor, I opened the door, letting the wind carry the smell of my daffodil garden to the store bought flowers on my countertop. I didn’t even say a word before the glass came waltzing in on his jagged corners leaving shards on my rug and scraping the stain from my wood floor. He told me not to put shoes on. He said that his disintegrating self would never cause harm to me, and he reminded me that his fallen pieces were still him. I didn’t know what he was doing there; I had never even met him before. But somehow, his presence made my home feel just a little more at home. I wasn’t very productive that day. I didn’t need to be if he was there. I used to fill my days with busy tasks hoping that I wouldn’t be homesick. I continued to do so until my days were so full with mindless thingamabobs that for some reason, made me believe that this home was my home. But I didn’t need to kid myself when the broken class sat down on my second-hand couch. He was home, so, therefore, I too was home, and I was home with him. I guess he reminded me of my childhood in a way. Rough, jagged, painful around the edges, threatening to shatter into a million shards that would run down my face. Or his face. Like a kid with a skinned knee because she didn’t know any better than to ride her bike over the plastic edging onto the gravel playground. But she was a kid who didn’t cry, because at a young age she realized that no one would hear those tears or mend those cracks, or even tell her where the bandages where so she could fix them herself. The broken glass knew this pain just as well as I do.