A Picasso

         He kisses my lips and says he can taste the lies in my teeth. I grab some Colgate and run my tongue over my molars but I cannot taste a thing, except the salt.

         “Maybe it’s the tears you taste,” I say bitterly. He laughs a laugh that I don’t love for the first time.

         If I broke him, I’ve spent these months molding him back with clay. I never said I was an artist. I never touched hands with Michelangelo.

          I never made you David.

         I was broken when you found me, young, naïve, but beautiful. Beauty is overrated; I never aspired to be a statue. I would’ve loved you both before and after a membership to Gold’s gym.

         Maybe Bella wasn’t so stupid for loving a man a thousand years old. Maybe I was wrong for making fun of her. Edward must have it all figured out. He’d never make a mistake or hurt her because he’s had a thousand years to grow up. Just like that Christina Perri song. Unlike me. Unlike us.

         You have hurt me everyday. I am built in pieces. I am a piñata—paper mache constructed from strips of newspaper and glue, so fragilely held around a balloon. I am a mosaic in the stained glass window of the church in town. I am the beauty stitched together by the broken. My face is now a Picasso, but still worth $100 million.

         But you don’t see it’s worth.

         But you tell me it’s I, that doesn’t see—

         I have broken every mirror I’ve ever received, eyed my reflection and said,
         “Look, now this is reality.”

         But I’m kind of glad. It’s something like the lasagna in the Tour of Italy you always order at Olive Garden. You always yelled at me for picking off the cheese as I was tasting it. Left with the basic layers torn apart: tomato sauce, pasta, cheeses; I got to see myself down to the ingredients. I got to pick out the parts of myself that were flawed.

         Now I pick up the pieces and toss them to the sun. If I am broken, I will glitter. I will be the rainbow. I will be colors come together. You broke me, and I can build myself up.

         I am strong.

         I will come to you shining.

         I will set down my paints because I cannot capture the complexity of the colors in your eyes. It isn’t my responsibility to make you whole again.

         It’s your responsibility to make art with the pieces.