When you catch me at the kitchen table, with 2am eyes, snapping my fingers back until
collateral ligaments outburn the hate inside, you blanket the flame. Tell me not to hurt
myself like that. You put match to gas, slosh the kettle into place. I catch your concern, use it
to hold my shattered shame in check. My brittle pieces are part of our history. You kiss my
forehead, matter of fact, turn, and land teabags in each cup, begin the fixing. Mending the
cracks in me like a smashed Japanese bowl, filled in, made whole, with liquid gold love. But,
who is patching your hurt? Is there a hair line crack in your bowl, barely visible? Will you
overflow? The kettle shrieks, spits. I will learn to curve, before I snap, for your sake.
Tracey Pearson is a poet and flash fiction writer from Newcastle upon Tyne. Her writing is published in print anthologies, magazines and online. Tracey’s recent writing can be found at CivicLeicester, Culture Matters, Dreich and Fragmented Voices.