Japanese tradition of filling
ceramic fractures with gold lacquer.

Not an attempt at disguise:
the opposite. It smartens the faults,

makes them the most spectacular part
of a bowl or vase, like breaks are part

of whatever natural life it has. When
I was 20 I had two spinal fractures—

I picture them filled with gold. Bones
grow back, bowls do not, but still I like

to think of it: lacquer in the lumbar spine,
hidden beneath skin and muscle. I should

have been at least a paraplegic; people
called me, still call me, miraculous, but

no one seems to care how that word
struggles beneath the weight of a god.

I depend on MRI scans showing
the spine repair itself, reconnect.

 

by Annie Diamond

 

Annie Diamond is a Connecticut native living presently in Chicago. She earned her BA in English and creative writing from Barnard College. Her poems are forthcoming in The Laurel Review, The Indianapolis Review, Free State Review, and Juxtaprose, and have previously appeared in Rabid Oak, Dirty Paws Poetry Review, Misadventures, The Columbia Review, and other publications. She has been awarded fellowships by The MacDowell Colony, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she completed her MFA in 2017.

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Cagibi Issue 3

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