Breadcrumb #399

CLAIRE DURAND-GASSELIN

A souvenir
in a gift shop
at the doors of reality

This is what I would like
my life
to look like
when it’s done:

A plate, with a quote from my mom,
and another one with a quote from my dad,
facing each other

A postcard,
with a picture of an elephant sitting at a pond,
quietly feeding the ducks

A miniature house,
with a real tree
and a dusty light bulb on the porch

A snow globe,
of skyscrapers and
plastic flakes
in the shape of letters

A keychain,
that is also
a key
to something unknown.

or
one of those bottles
filled with layers
of colored sand

Colors of all the places
and people
I knew and loved
the wrong or the right way

layers of the years
spent as some one
or another one

pigments for all the images
I saw and made
salt for the dried tears
and fragments of the broken vase
I am

and at the bottom
like a foundation
some thick golden sand
from la p’tite plage
where I spent my hours
chasing seashells
in Brittany.

and in the mix
of all this
diffused and
discreet
a drop of mud
for all the pain
of my family.

Sealed with beeswax
as a tribute
to nature
standing still
on a shelf
like a mountain
or a tree

Then somebody would come
and grab me
and drop me
maybe by accident
And the wind would blow
And I would disperse my self
in textured particles
becoming dust
in heaven.

• • •