Creative Writing "The Vase"

I was the perfect amount of broken for you. My pieces were jagged and messy but you could still visualize the whole of me even if I couldn't hold myself together just yet. I wasn't quite so shattered that minuscule bits of clay turned to dust had gotten lost forever in the chaos of every day life. I had fallen apart, just not too much. And you wanted to be the one to fix me. It'd take a little bit of effort, and if you weren't careful you might have cut yourself on one of the razor edges. But I wasn't too hefty a project for you. Had I been whole, you would have viewed me as too pristine for your taste. Had I been even more dismantled then you would have dubbed me too much effort for not enough reward.

For you, it was just right.

I was an opportunity to you, and you dug your teeth in. It was a parasitic undoing of the sense of self I had managed to scrape together into a temporary existence while the rest of me was still under maintenance.

We were both so dependent in all of the wrong ways, such a fragile relationship with no foundation whatsoever. You looked to me for a sense of purpose and belonging, maybe at the very least just as a way to occupy your mind while passing the time. Concurrently, I looked to you to string all my pieces together again.

I was haphazardly placed on a ledge, waiting for the glue to dry, after you attempted to repair me - yours was a half-assed attempt at salvaging someone who had perhaps already lost the value that you were seeking before you'd even happened upon her. I was clinging to that ledge and circumstance knocked me to the floor anyway.

So there we were, me with my shattered fragments now skewed beyond the point of no return, you both discouraged and disheartened. You had never set out be a perpetual rival of circumstance, continually undoing what circumstance had done. And no amount of adhesive or effort could pull together such pieces so tiny that they were lost to the floorboards. Pieces of me missing and gone, and others so mangled that you had no chance of identifying which bits belonged where. Who was I? What was I to you at this point?

Instead of trying to fix it all again, you jumped ship, but to be sincere, I can't blame you. I wished at the time that I too could have jumped ship from the wreckage of myself. So you swept up the remains and disposed of them accordingly. And with all of my pieces now separated or lost, the whole of me could never be quite the same as I had been before.

But some people learn how to make the best of things, you know?

When at once I had been a whole vase with colors and intricacies carved into my ceramics, I am that no longer. I could never truly be again - circumstance made sure of that.

You wanted to spend your effort and adoration on a different piece of art, you wanted to hold out for an investment of your time that would be less risky, less prone to damage. As is your right.

Maybe I can't be fixed. Well, that isn't entirely true, but rather maybe I shouldn't be fixed.

I have gathered up what pieces I could, replaced the few I could remember back to where they belong, and I collected new pieces and fragments and tidbits from circumstance and happenstance, coincidence and experience. I am changing, perhaps once a piece of art manifested as a vase, now a masterpiece realized in a mosaic.

So wait for your new art and I can neither blame nor envy you, for art does not covet art. We beautiful things will simply complement one another in the tapestry of you.