When I was 7 or 8 or 78

I am not sure which

I ascended to a valley of darkness and dust

with the help of a man’s hand around my throat

and his knees between mine

I gasp when I remember the look in his eyes

before I had washed away

and my body prepared for decay

That split, that transformation

created a self that was neither present

in the physical

or in spirit

I did not return to this Earth whole

but in pieces that hover around a core

a gut made of unstable gravity

barely holding together

A black hole of a being

There are days when I can feel them

shooting away into the void

the pieces of the thing called self

they are not grounded here

in this plane

they have not been tethered for some time

I began to carve new ones

to replace the lost

fashioned them out of coveted trinkets

discarded by others

but I could never remember the way they were exactly

the line of the jaw was always wrong

the shape of the lip not quite right

a kinetic mobile

a clinking dirge

of quilted together

almost

maybes