Pottery

Some are poured once,
bone-white, unblemished,
a canticle of symmetry, No Harmony needed..
They cradle water without weeping,
set high on mantels,
admired, untouched.
Their glaze is a gospel of perfection,
Like the blue ribbon scapegoat 
Levi spared – too pretty to sacrifice.
They hold the world’s gaze
and never flinch.

I was not such a vase.

I was dropped before my clay could sing.
Shattered in the kiln of a cruel hand,
my pieces scattered –
in gutters, in graves,
in the mouths of those
who chewed my edges for sport.
I clawed through the ash to find myself,
each fragment a knife,
each touch a wound.
My hands bled trying to hold
what sin had sundered. 
I was a scream in the dark,
a Psalm unanswered,
a Hebrews curse:
no forgiveness without blood.
My shards, their sores,
Scraping for what little relief it gave. 

I bled.

I leaked despair.
I spilled my name.
Some pressed their lips
to my brokenness
and called it love.
They drank my life
and left me jagged.

And yet –
He knelt.
Not to sweep me away,
not to sand me smooth,
I had already cut Him.
His fingers traced my obsidian edges,
His palms bled where I was blade.
He mixed His blood with mortar,
a Gospel glue,
a the gift unearned that binds
what evil broke.Piece by piece,

He named me:
This shard, your sorrow.
This, your shame.
This, the sin you carried
as a lion’s mane.

He wove them. 
Divine art.
a vase of facets,
of blaze and fracture,
of lumen leaking through seams.
Perfect for a world dimly lit.
I am no longer monotone.
My texture – His testimony,
My cracks – His canvas.
I hold water now,
Drawn not from Jacob’s well
But from a fountain flowing deep and wide. 
By His scars.
I carry flowers –
wild, wounded, redeemed.

To the shattered, still in shadow –
You bruised reeds, smoldering flax:
Your edges are not your end.
He stoops to gather what broke.
His blood the mortar-seam,
His vision the shape
You were always meant to be.
Leak gleam, beloved.
His mosaic.