Kintsugi

It takes time and attention, sometimes more than I have. So I hurry, I'm reckless and I make a mess of it, I break it off, I do it again. I smear and scratch back, I sand. It would take half the time if I paid twice the attention.

I found out with puffed cheeks this week that the same oil I use to glue ceramic is what's in poison ivy.

When I was twelve I would let my indoor cat out, Mushka, a Russian name for a Russian blue. He would sit on my shoulders. I would chase him in the stream behind our house with a stick, feathers on one end, a string and bell on the other. I'd fish for him. It was a favorite game.

I missed a week of school once because I had chased him through poison ivy, my face swelled up so much my eyes were swollen shut. I would have done it on purpose if I knew I'd get out of school for it. I missed a lot of school those years, as much as I could. I'm grateful for that.

We didn't play that game anymore after we moved a couple blocks away, no longer on the corner of two dead ends with a wild grove just beyond a metal barrier at the end of the street.

I haven't had poison ivy since, until this week.

The pure oil of it smudged across a mug and then carelessly wiped across my face.

What does it mean when I'm falling apart and I smear urushi on my face, gold dust in swollen puffy cheeks. I look cute. My face hurts. Maybe it's holding me together.

The next morning I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot screaming as I wipe a pad of oil remover across my face, the kid in the car next to me watching wide-eyed.

Hot water on itchy skin. The relief of it.

My body becoming a cartoon to make sense of my life this week.

Sometimes you don't know what you're going to do until you do it. Other times I feel a stalwart pull toward who I'm becoming, like it's inevitable.

Maybe I can do all of this on purpose.