Unbroken

We have our moments, you and I,
when we walk
on eggshells, sometimes on
an expanse of ice.
We deal with it,
masked with grimaces,
a moment fragile as porcelain, and then
it cracks and breaks.
I confess to all
my sins, and my
faux pas and silly mistakes.
There we are,
two sinners un-frozen,
and then, in
shimmering light, the
moon’s magnetism pulls us together, tight
in an unbroken lock,
cementing the embrace of
years. You smile and light up my
face.

Kim M. Russell, 24th June 2025

Image by Simon Lee on Unsplash

For this Tuesday’s Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub we are building from the broken with Mish, our host, who tells us about her experience with kintsugi bowls, and how that philosophy relates to the theme of the upcoming dVerse anthology. She reminds us that kintsugi was first introduced by Grace in a haibun prompt in 2017.

We have been given the specific anthology sub-topics that inspired Mish’s prompt, and can choose one to inspire our poems, or we could also write about kintsugi. I decided to write a golden shovel from the individual perspective and love as a crossroad, by taking a couple of lines from a poem by one of my favourite poets, Carol Ann Duffy, entitled ‘Wintering’. The lines are:

‘I walk on ice, it grimaces, then breaks.
All my mistakes
are frozen in the tight lock of my face.’

38 thoughts on “Unbroken”

  3. Lovely! You describe so eloquently the way relationships and love sometimes need a bit of a “crack” once in awhile to open us up, see the light, confess, move on….

    I especially love this….

    “We deal with it,
    masked with grimaces,
    a moment fragile as porcelain..”

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  4. Yep, that seems to me how a marriage survives the longer haul – an lock made of faults held together by unseen magnetism weirdly unbreakable. Some dark lucent thing keeps saying yes. Well done, Kim. (Not linked to the challenge is a poem today I titled “Marital” along the same moonlit seams.)

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  8. In the ‘right’ or ‘best’ relationship, I can feel this. My wife and I barely ever talk about the times that we snapped, there’s nothing in it to actually resolve. We accept that we our foibles, or moments of explosion because we know that they are brief outbursts and they will pass.

    In previous, ‘not quite right’, relationships these events may have been enough to break up over.

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  9. luv the tension the confession and the mending

    all too often it is a scene of pointingvthe finger, but here is the acknowledement of imperfection knowing and striving for better

    luv it

    much♡love

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  13. All of us whose relationships have lasted for 40 years plus will recognise the sentiments you outline so beautifully here Kim and it is quite some time since we have had sins to confess but I love “cementing the embrace of
    years”…

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  17. This is lovely, simply lovely. Your description of the tension is ‘spot on’.

    “a moment fragile as porcelain, and then
    it cracks and breaks”

    And the resolution is so recognizable, too.

    I’ve been married a long time, and this is a perfect description of how the infrequent skirmishes unfold.

    Just gotta love a poem that you can wear like a favorite old sweater.

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