Broken

I am part of a broken family. No, not in the conventional sense. We're all still around. My mom and dad, they love each other and they love us. We don't hit or say things we don't mean. At least not anymore. But we are broken.

Consider, for a moment, the dishes off which you may or may not enjoy your meals.

This is a complete set. However, through time, it has deteriorated. It is chipped, glued together and cracked. These things happen when you put dishes in the hands of a child or in a microwave and just through general wear. You just can't bear to throw it away because it's been around for so long. But it still holds your meals. This set is not one you would purchase new or even used. But you might consider donating it. Hey, all the pieces are there. There's even this one extra that doesn't quite fit but it stacks just fine for a while. Until it doesn't. Until it scratches that dish it's sitting on so badly that the ceramic finish isn't enough to hold it all together. So that dish falls apart completely. And the rest wish to follow suit.

Oh, but not these dishes. No. They may fall apart, this much is true. But they will hide it and hold themselves together. These dishes of undetermined color and origin, they survive. These dishes, the cockroaches of the culinary world, just won't let go. They are a constant. Cracks and chips and all.

The thing about dishes, at least ones that are not made of plastic, is that they tend to break. So it really makes complete sense that the dish ran away with the spoon. The spoon, it bends. But there's no snapping that spoon. It does not need to be put back together. That dish can rely on that spoon as much as it wants to and that spoon doesn't mind. And they can share all their meals together. There's probably a cat playing the fiddle somewhere.

But this dish? This dish separated herself from the rest. She didn't have a spoon to run away with but she ran anyway. Silly dish. The lines and cracks remain. It's a dish you eat off of with your hands, if you eat off of it at all. It's just one broken dish. Part of a whole no one can find anymore. This dish sits in the sink, waiting to be washed. Waiting for a spoon to ask her to run away. Waiting to be needed. Just waiting.