Puzzle Pieces

sheltered in my oak and drywall bunker
I could hear the inflections of assault,
each missiled accusation sanding away
at the sketch-and-draw bridge of my youth fortress.

and then a new sound, like glass marble comets
bouncing and scraping against linoleum craters,
sent me hacking through my uncertainty jungle
to the living room to pick my mother off the floor, again.

but the noise hadn't been her bones breaking.
instead, the fault-lined portrait of a victorian Santa Clause,
which I had begun piecing together before Thanksgiving,
now divided the bruised carpet and twenty year union

like his catholic mother and her beaded counselor
had promised at the toast during act one,
and for the first time, he didn't dive
to press his money in to mend the cracks.