Kintsugi PatriciaJoslin

I trudge through campus alone, shattered by loss. Like a Japanese craftsman you soften my edges pour gold to seal my cracks polish, cradle me. You mend me to become beautiful dust me with desire create a shining cup for us to share, fragments fixed by fate. I surrender to your artistry.

NOTE: Kintsugi, “to join with gold” is the 15th-Century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with powdered gold to make an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.

Patricia Joslin is a retired educator, an avid (but not athletic) golfer and an active volunteer in the Charlotte, North Carolina community. She recently completed a chapbook collection, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing which will be published by Charlotte Lit Press this spring. Two of her poems have appeared in Kakalak 2021 and 2022.