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[w]hole

by Kendra Craighead 


My hands shattered into sharp edges
that made my mother afraid to hold me. Instead
she found a flat piece without much weight to it and snatched it up.

She spoke to its reflection saying,
“There is so much of me in you. I know exactly what you’re going through.” 
But before I could stop her, she dropped the jagged glass and it splintered
 
beside the rest of me on the floor.
Over the years I put myself back together, sweeping and gluing until
I was almost whole, save for the pieces I never found.
 
An eye rolling across the marble, a leg limping alone down
the stairs, some fingers inching like worms
to find me again: My mirror heart is beating under a bed collecting dust.
 
I waited the rest of my life
for someone to come along
who wouldn’t be afraid to bleed. 


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Kendra Craighead is a senior student at the University of La Verne in La Verne, CA. She is studying journalism and creative writing with an emphasis in poetry, with aspirations of becoming a published fiction novelist. Kendra enjoys reading graphic novels, fiction, non-fiction, as well as practicing photography and experimenting with poetry.
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"[w]hole" was written originally as a prose poem piece, and in many ways Kendra still reads it that way, but however the readers intemperate the poem is entirely up to them, and that to Kendra is what makes poetry so beautiful. "[w]hole" is for anyone who can relate to fragility and the strength it takes to rebuild oneself in the aftermath of an emotional catastrophe.