Restoration
I don’t remember when it broke or how—
the statue of the Infant of Prague my mother
gave me more than forty years ago.
But I remember gathering up the pieces,
frantically reaching under the bed and nightstand
heedless of the sharp edges,
slipping the shards into a white cotton sock
to keep them from getting separated,
swaddling them between two thick sweaters
in the bottom drawer to prevent further fracture.
I kept it in that drawer for decades,
until the day I watched you repair
the porcelain frame that held our wedding picture
with such tender care, and measured pace,
your patience as you held each fragment
in place until the bond was permanent.
When I asked you to restore my mother’s gift,
you withdrew the fragments like an archeologist
unearthing an ancient treasure with nothing
but tweezers and glue and steady hands.
Now I keep it on a high shelf safe from traffic,
where no one can see the delicate web of cracks,
or the hole in the back where the tiny bits
had shattered into such fine powder
they couldn’t be repaired, but you gathered them
like gold dust and poured them into the cavity,
restored, repaired, remembered.
Gloria Heffernan is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Fused (Shanti Arts Publishing). Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books). Her forthcoming collection, Moments of Color and Cloud will be published by Shanti Arts in 2026. To learn more, visit: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.
image: © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar
Amethyst Review 