Everything Needs Fixing
- Karla Cordero (2021)
in your thirties everything needs fixing. i bought a toolbox for this. filled it with equipment my father once owned to keep our home from crumbling. i purchased tools with names & functions unknown to me. how they sat there on their shelf in plastic packaging with price tags screaming: hey lady, you need this! like one day i could give my home & everything living inside it the gift of immortality, to be a historical monument the neighbor’s would line up to visit even after i’m gone & shout: damn that’s a nice house! i own a drill now, with hundreds & hundreds of metal pieces i probably won’t use or use in the wrong ways but what i’m certain of, is still, the uncertainty of which tools repair the aging dog, the wilting snake plant, the crow’s feet under my eyes, the stiff knee or bad back. & maybe this is how it is—how parts of our small universe dissolve like sugar cubes in water—a calling to ask us to slow our busy breathing so we can marvel at its magic. because even the best box of nails are capable of rust. because when i was a child i dropped a cookie jar in the shape of noah’s ark, a family heirloom that shattered to pieces. the animals broke free, zebras ran under the kitchen table, the fractured lion roared by the front door & out of the tool cabinet i snagged duck tape & ceramic glue. pieced each beast back to their intended journey. because that afternoon when my father returned from work i confessed & he sat the jar on the counter only to fill it with pastries. how the cracks of imperfection mended by my hands laid jagged. chipped paint sliced across a rhino’s neck. every wild animal lined up against the boat— & a flood of sweet confections waiting inside.
loved this.
