When it crashed,

to the floor,

the Ming, I mean

the Labrabdor shuddered.

But  the cat swished her tail, purring.

She curled herself around my feet

that were

still

I stood there for a while, tracing

the air as the fragments rose,

drifting  in china clouds.

Held for only seconds.  Then

spat out onto the Wooden floor.

Fake, of course.  The vase.

And the laminate.  And this life;

I couldn’t call  Mum, to tell her the news.

I sank, instead, beside this graveyard of antiquity.

jigsawing together the shards

of a broken past.

© Jacqui Thatcher 2014