It stained everything
In the days I was shaken
Seeping from cracks
Ripped through the foundation.

Broken, I became
All ink stain and rubble.
Who pained to look on me
Invited trouble.

Days and distance
Stilled the quake
I still awake at night
Prone to shake

In the wake of the devastation
I have tasted:
The flesh and folly
Quaking wasted.

Who I am
Forever stained
Along the fissures
Carved like veins

By a mighty hand
I could not see,
Guiding these cracks
That had to be

But in the deepest chasm
Of fractured despair,
I found one small flower
Blooming fair

A fragile, fragrant blossom,
Unfamiliar to my sight,
And it’s nectar held the power
To put every fracture right.

I did not have it in me
To shut up the chasm deep,
To force the little flower
Into impotence and sleep.

So I live along these fault lines,
This open, aching earth,
So I can ever reach the little bloom
That grants broken dust rebirth.

There is a great compassion
Built into my design;
I am the gaping fissure,
But the flower, too, is mine.