I’m retracing my life, the lines of which
run in rapidly radiating circles of I’ve
been here before but this time… This time  

I know some of what it means to shatter.
In a bar last night, I drank with a woman
who I knew from forgotten rhythms—  

margaritas, salt shrubs & we watched
as everything broke down around us.
Glasses & bottles let loose to their own  

jagged ends as if one loud, leapt noise
could make certain everyone listened:
yellow rose wine stem snap, five thick  

bottles brash-cascade & then, at the
table behind us, half the whole spread
in a slippery clatter. This while we watched  

& drank & laughed in a room that spun
until it pulled apart around us. All that still
made sense were my sterling silver  

earrings in long tangled threads & the light
that lingered on the wish-thin straps
of her white camisole. When we shut  

down the bar, we went to part ways in the
night-stripped heat of mid-June Manhattan.
Without thinking, I put my hand to my chest  

or to hers or she to mine, right where our
soon-bare skin already shone an immediate
glisten. & something felt different, the kind  

of blank gasp that starts inside all of our
growth. Here, at the edge of a darkened
room, my once-necklaced heart spilled open.