Unaware, I’d stacked
all our remaining soup bowls,
white-on-white with a corolla
of raised lines radiating outward,
on an unstable shelf.
The shelf betrays me, the bowls tilt forward,
slide to the floor and shatter.
Our wedding china,
the Hutschenreuther from Bavaria
we both loved sixty years ago,
a pattern called Apart.
I arrange the shards,
try to cement them.
Too small, too many, I give up.
I place them on our maple table
to photograph,
capture sharp points and fractal arcs
in unintended splendor,
but each piece gleams alone.
I look up apart
in Cassell’s German lexicon.
“Distinct, remarkable.”
True of the pattern,
true of us
when we lived together,
since we’ve lived apart.
Steve Nickman is a child psychiatrist in Brookline, Massachusetts with a strong interest in the experiences of adoptees and foster children. He is a member of PoemWorks, founded by Barbara Helfgott Hyett. His work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, The MacGuffin, Rhino, Southern Literary Review, and other publications. His poetry collection, To Sleep with Bears, was published by Word Press in 2022.