It had not yet hit the cement floor
and shattered into incalculable smithereens.
I was, of course, in a hurry.
It was, of course, glass.
I can freeze it, the moment
I knew the bottle was going to fall
and there was not a thing
I could do to stop it—
that moment as brief as when
I decided to tell the truth
after he asked the question
I hoped he would never ask.
All those shards—they never
go back to a whole. How the sunlight
gathers in them, thousands of prisms
scattered all over the floor.
