Broken Glass as an Obvious Metaphor by Jen Finstrom

          So many useless things
          which nobody broke
          but which got broken anyway
               -“Ode to Broken Things,” Pablo Neruda

You knew it was a bad idea to stand barefoot on
a folding chair to change the kitchen lightbulb
but worried more about the chair breaking, losing
your balance, than about dropping the rounded
light cover which explodes in tiny pieces
of snow-colored glass, trapping you on the chair
where you simply remain standing, staring at it.
In the end, you climb down in the one clear space
between the refrigerator and the sink and push the chair
forward, climb on it again, reach one of your blue
slippers that isn’t full of tiny shards and hop
through to safety where you can begin to consider
cleaning up. Over the past months it’s become so
tempting to let inertia have its way. Two broken
blinds hang uselessly in their windows, letting in
more sun than you want, and for a second, you
imagine a world where the glass remains on your
floor while you continue to live around it, never
setting foot in your kitchen again, dishes always
undone, half-finished cup of coffee forever out of reach.



Jen Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for 13 years, and recent publications include Atlanta Review and Escape into Life. Her work also appears in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks and several other Silver Birch Press anthologies.