There Once Was a Man

There Once Was a Man

who looked at his life and saw a jigsaw puzzle
with pieces that didn’t fit into a picture that made sense.

Then,

someone told him to start with the borders and work inward,
but he hated the idea of being penned in, and besides,
how can one frame the puzzle of a life that isn’t complete?

So,

he tried to match colors, and that didn’t work because
each glittering piece produced a unique hue
when he held it up to the sun,
and all of them blinded him with their brilliance.

Sightless,

he fumbled with the shards, running the tips of his fingers
over their jagged edges, hoping this sensory experience
might help him slip the fragments back into a picture,
but he’d forgotten how to touch and, in his imagination,
everything felt like cardboard.

Frustrated,

he swept the puzzle away, fuming at the idea
that he’d even considered the amazing events of his life
as nothing more than jigsaw pieces to be slotted together,
one into the next, to represent the masterpiece he was,
and so he sat, alone, pondering his existence
while the world walked around him.

And,

after a time, weeping, the man crawled from his stoop,
and began searching the dust for his scattered shards,
humble in the knowledge
of what the finished puzzle would portray.