When the ceramic tile shattered,
I was ashamed I hadn’t cared better
for this piece of art created

by a friend, one part of
a quadriptych. All I saw
was the void

beneath two nail holes
in my bathroom wall,
beauty of the other three tiles

lessened by more
than a mere fourth.
When I swept the floor

and gathered shards
on a plastic plate,
I was reminded that

all vanity is temporary.
We consist of borrowed parts,
atoms born in distant stars

that comprised a billion things
before becoming us.
Who was I to say

these fragments were not
another form of art,
an experimental collage

just as beautiful as what
I’d hung on my wall.
Maybe more.

The author of five poetry collections, one book of fiction, and hundreds of magazine articles, Bill Glose was featured by NPR on The Writer’s Almanac in 2017 and won the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction in 2023. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Missouri Review, Rattle, Poet Lore, Narrative Magazine, and The Sun.