The city where I have lived all my life
has been shaken to rubble.
From behind a broken edifice, an old man with only one eye calls to me.
His voice is like the ragged peace of an old love, he speaks-
"When nothing is certain,
everything is possible".
The towers that have stood above me for as long as I have lived
are broken at my feet,
I must climb over and around
the massive pieces of fallen concrete,
splintered wood, and broken glass;
a clumsy collage of chaos.
And in the nine months since the earth
shook my city to the ground,
life has continued it’s rhythmic chant
of grow, grow, grow.
Vines have stretched their arms and climbed up the sleeping wreckage of history,
adorning the cracked village with green, flowering life.
Grow, grow, grow.
Above my head, a little bird is weaving its nest in an old window pane.
Meticulously, she twists bits and pieces of what has fallen
into a delicate bed.
I am like her,
keeping pieces of what has broken,
and building my new life-
beautiful, intricate, strong.
