Broken Things Poem by Nika McGuin

I love broken things,
broken people...
for pity, I've tried to fix them
each of them, strangers to a parent's love
I had dared to mother them
ignorant in the face of true love
I had wished to teach them by demonstration
and, like porcelain dolls shattered into tiny pieces
I thought, maybe I could piece them
back together again, I could
super-glue their hearts somehow

I do love broken things
but they don't - love me -
quite the same; I know
the persons in question
are just, far too
crushed, to do so

A dissected heart
no longer beats
a homeless man
cannot provide shelter

It should be common sense:
they can not give to me
what they themselves have never had

To love the loveless
is to oneself become loveless
to attempt to unbreak the broken
is to oneself become broken

Oh, I have loved broken things! -
that have never been whole enough
to love me back