There was this precious vase that was my life.
 It was a thing of beauty on a sacred shelf.
 It had a purity and sense of truth.
 It was a vessel of my love.

But now, I gaze at fragments strewn across my hearth.
How strange, since I can feel there's something else.
Yet, when I look down, I recognise that someone smashed it.
It must have slipped when I was cleaning.

I am sitting in the middle of my life.
 I can gaze at all the pieces that had been.
 I cannot even try to pick them up.
 I haven't got a clue how they should join.

They fascinate me, these pieces of myself.
Is this what I was, such fragile glass?
They look so good scattered on the floor.
Fragments, of what I was before.

And even a child knows when something's final.
 And even a fool knows when to stop.
 You can lay the pieces all across a table.
 But you'll never get them back upon the shelf.