Friendship Jar

October 4, 1999

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Our friendship was a beautiful ceramic jar.
Every now and then it got a few cracks in it,
But one of us would put glue in the cracks,
And then it would be fine.
We were better at different parts of taking care of the jar;
We both painted it, but your colors were brighter,
We both glued the cracks, but when I glued it, it held better.
The jar was perfect, part you and part me.

Then you dropped the jar.
It cracked down the middle, a long crack.
I was sad that you did that to it, but of course
I put glue in the crack and fixed it.
But for some reason, the glue didn’t hold this time.
You dropped it again, and it broke in another place.
I fixed it, but it was weaker yet.
Then I dropped it.
You tried to fix it, but it was kind of messed up.
After a while, I tried again to fix it.
But it just kept getting more and more little cracks.
The little cracks did the most damage.

It felt as if all I did was put glue in those tiny cracks
I had glue all over my fingers all the time
And my neck and back hurt from stooping over it
Until I decided the jar was worthless and left it.
Later, I realized how beautiful it was and tried again to fix it.
You threw the jar, and it shattered into a million pieces.
I tried to put them back together, but lots of pieces were missing.
I gave up.
If you had no desire to fix the jar, neither did I.
I was angry with you.
So I threw the pieces and broke them even more.
It felt good not to be the one to have to fix it.

As time went on, I forgave you for breaking the jar,
And asked you to forgive me too.
But I missed it.
Then I asked you why you did it, but you wouldn’t say.
I cried and cried and cried.
It would never be whole and beautiful again.
Finally, I accepted that and was determined to forget.

Not much later, on one of the best days of my life,
I suddenly, unexpectedly saw you.
You had come just for me, gone out of your way.
Done something special for me.
You had the jar and in it a glowing candle.
In that moment, you glued our beautiful jar back together.
All of the pieces that had been thrown and broken
A thousand times over—all of those were back as one.
It had no marks, no sign that it had ever been broken.
It was our beautiful jar once again.

The jar is whole but blank.
We have to repaint it.
It will be fun to repaint; think how fun it was the first time.
But at least it is not broken anymore.
Thank you for fixing it.
I promise you I will not give up, I will always try to fix it
Even if you throw it again.