The Marble We Mistake for Ruin
The lowest room we ever build has windows we forget—
a floor of shattered mirrors where the honest self is kept.
We name it ruin, name it end, and drown it in regret,
not knowing it’s the quarry where the marble first was stepped.
The heart collapses not to punish, but to help reveal
some deeper architecture that no comfort ever found.
We wince and call it tragedy, refuse the truth we feel—
that only wounds torn open let the sacred touch the ground.
We chase the feeling down the block, convinced it too will stay,
we buy the book, we breathe the app, we post the sunset’s shine,
then when it fades by Tuesday noon we blame the holiday,
convinced that joy’s a purchase we forgot to buy in line.
The ego keeps a ledger of the debts it never owed,
it audits every mirror till it finds a kinder lie.
We starve the soul on flattery to lighten what we’re towed,
then call the hunger wisdom while we let the hunger die.
We scroll at two a.m. for meaning, wrapped in someone’s voice,
a stranger’s borrowed wisdom set to rain and violins.
We nod like it is scripture, mistake volume for a choice,
then close the app unchanged and blame the algorithm’s sins.
And yet beneath the parody a truer ache remains,
that darkness is the tuition none of us agreed to pay.
No lantern holds a single flame without the dark that trains
the eye to finally recognize the shape of light as day.
Sit with it, we’re told, and so we sit and check the clock,
we scroll again for patience, then complain the peace is slow.
We want the mountain’s silence with the traffic of the flock,
we want the harvest overnight from seeds we didn’t sow.
Michelangelo once swore the angel slept inside the stone,
his chisel did not build the form — it only set it free.
Our truth was never sculpted new; it waited on its own,
for every honest fracture shows us who we’re meant to be.
So hold this page up like a glass and study what it shows—
not sculpture finished, only rubble learning to be true.
The wound, the joke, the chisel-strike are one and the same throes
that either break us into dust, or break us into you.
…
DCG
