Fragments and Targets (SLAM)

They were going to be

patterned urns,
symmetrical vases,
smooth sculptures,
but now,
my broken glass,
shattered ceramic desires,
are just a blanket under my feet.
I step right
to see they form shapes
of light stabbing a forest,
suspended water spheres,
a window’s ledge,
stretching blue,
an unseen smile,
and realize,
my failings
have a different beauty.

It’s the beauty of
the last runner,
fighting his contracted muscle
for 30 yards of limps
to conquer the finish line.
It’s the beauty of
dark half moons under a caregiver’s eyes--
the tattoos of morning coaxing and night clean-ups
that afternoon breaks can’t hide.
It’s the beauty of a rubbing alcohol stream
poured into a cut
to scratch out infection
and jab purifying needles.
It’s the beauty of a wife,
hiding blood from her lungs,
putting cancer on hold
so she could tell her husband
“goodbye.”
It’s when my disaster audition
and burnt cookies
are the jagged pieces I needed
for the sun’s reflection
in my mosaic--
Not to Iove making mistakes,
but love that they make me.

And yes,
I’m defying my “Asianness.”
“You must be this” and “you can never do this” commands
from tiger moms
I meet and create
are hot oil drops bouncing off my
orange juice rejection--
always trying to combine,
but never accepted.
Success isn’t measured with
percents and lead-filled bubbles
because “the best”
with letters and numbers to aim at
isn’t my bull’s-eye.
“My best”
is the arrow that never misses
my moving targets.

I hope,
so much,
that I’m never named perfectionist.
“Perfect”is a mirror pond
with light ripples
masking corrosive embraces.
“Perfect”is gold statue
made by worshipers
to reflect floodlights
and blind them
from their own cracks
and fill their caverns with liquid success
until they create fulfillment
that always shifts
and breaks,
never crystallizing.
“Perfect” needs airbrushes and erasers
with painted people
hating and breaking
with super glued eye patches
of Photoshopped fantasies
and fraying net insides.

I’ve aimed at “perfect”
floating too close to the sun.
So I tried to sprout wings
defeated by gravity
burned up by reality
and all I had
were tentacles,
detached suction cups
flagging the dreams
I lashed at
and couldn’t hold.

My kindergarten teacher said,
“Mistakes are for learning.”
So I learned
by tracing outlines in crayon
and inking my insides with markers
bleeding onto my smiley stickers,
but everyone knows you outline with marker
and color in with crayon.
My drawing was abnormal--
wrong.
Others’ crayon insides
made my marker stains
self-consciousness
until my ink
could trust hands and brushes
to cover sidewalks
with fingerprints and splatters.

Those mistakes were the seesaws and trampolines
to shatter the glass cubes
that held me,
with no holes for oxygen--
just suffocating plans
of test scores and art pieces that others set for me,
or that I traced.
So sometimes,
I needed one person,
invisible to me before,
to jump on the other side
to help my short legs
and cheer when my hands finally broke through.
The slivers of bloodstained glass
formed a girl’s smile,
and I realized how cold I was,
with ice braces of streak-free expectations,
but imperfection was the sun’s bite on my skin
reminding me,
I’m alive.

I can’t see the end of this mosaic...
so,
I pull out my bow,
close my eyes,
shoot an arrow.