I watched her—the way her shoulders moved with the tilt of her head, how her smile lit up the six people around her, how her hair, tucked behind her ears, framed her face like baby’s breath. I thought about how the sound of her heart beating sounded the rhythm for our dance atop the magnolia floor. I wanted to tell her all this, but didn’t know how. Just because something is broken doesn’t mean it’s no good. Doesn’t mean you throw it away. It just means it’s broken, and broken is okay. I wanted to tell her that broken is still beautiful, still works, still wakes me in the morning, and at the end of every day past and those to come, I can love broken.
Charles Martin, Maggie
broken