Like the flecked bark of bent birch, so long scarred that scars and skin have blended, old wounds match birthmarks now, and this seems right–– to mirror fate and accident, deliberate and unknown. Once, to see it would break my heart. And did, I think. I can’t remember how. Only that at some point I knew it to be a thing of too many shards to be considered whole by any stretch, no matter how careful the mending. Not that I was so careful with the mending. But here she is anyway––of a piece, in a manner of speaking, nodding along with the head over the tattered skins of arms, as the head remarks: How fitting, for any occasion.
