The moment her hammer struck the china plate, she felt something arouse inside her. Like the beat of Duncan's heart pressed against her bosom, like the rumble of a train chugging across the Midwest.
The rays of a summer sunset lanced down from her kitchen window. Under the dying crimson light, the fragments on the floor glittered like bloodied shards of glass.
Anna had always found broken things to be beautiful. As a child, she often walked by the old train tracks behind her home, where the convergent rails met an inscrutable end at the horizon. By the tracks she would find pieces of coal; the rivets that marked where they had fractured were the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
After she met him, she brought Duncan to her train tracks. The oldest pieces had hardened and glossed like shards of obsidian. She told him about how she used to fill her pockets with the worthless treasures, so sure that one day they would become diamonds.
She remembered how he laughed at that. Like the strident blare of an incoming train, punctuated by the distant roar of steam engines. He was a chemist. He knew that these things took tens of thousands of years. Always such a realist.
Anna reached for the golden box on the countertop. "Kintsugi Set", it read. And scrawled under it: "For Anna: Fix Me. Love, Duncan".
That had been their fifth anniversary present. He had pulled it out of a wrinkled Macy's bag, sheepishly like a schoolboy caught with his homework incomplete. It had been a day late. As he leaned over to kiss her, the scent of whiskey washed over her.
Fishing for the biggest piece of plate from the kitchen floor, Anna placed it on the counter. She removed the ivory coated horse hair brushes from their cellophane prison. Mixed with water, the gold dust swirled like a constellation in a plastic Ikea cup.
***
She never thought she'd find love at the bottom of a cup. It was beer, in fact - her first glass. Yes, she remembered a time when she reveled in her nights out on the town, when her eyes sparkled with anticipation and her skin tingled in the breeze of a warm summer night. One such night, a stranger had bought her first drink.
When she lowered the perspiring glass, carmine nails making oily inroads across the perfect surface, she knew that he was the first one she would take a chance on.
"You're like an angel", he said, as his eyes locked with hers. "When I look at you, I want to eat your love and drink your smile."
She fell for him like suicide from a bridge.
He was selfish, insecure, and insensitive. He came to her seeking salvation. Instead, he became her Muse, and from his unpredictable, kaleidoscopic behavior, she was inspired to write as she never had before.
She remembered the prose he made of her prone body in her bed that night, her very first time. He would have preferred to call it a reaction. Meat and chemicals. That was what he worked with in the lab.
***
Applying the gold dust paste to the edge of the fragment was easy. The hard part was finding the perfect pieces to put together. She always found a piece that she thought must fit. But she could never be sure. She had never tried to fix broken things before. She had always preferred that things remain where they were, close enough to observe and inspire, but never close enough to hurt her. They were always better off lying in pieces on the ground.
***
That was how she found herself on their first anniversary. Gritty, cold linoleum under her fingernails. Phosphorescent lights that all of a sudden, seemed too bright. Sterilized, stifling air.
"Anna, please sit up. We're not sure about this. Preliminary tests have merely indicated that you may have difficulty. We'll book a session with your gynecologist tomorrow."
The physician's voice was clinically sympathetic, as satisfying as the dry hospital air. Duncan's arms circled her waist. "It's okay, Anna," He whispered. "I don't really mind."
But he did.
"You'll probably find that this was a false negative tomorrow." The doctor offered helpfully.
But she didn't.
***
When Anna put the final piece into place, the sun was spraying its last bloodied beams onto the clouds outside her window. Tomorrow, she would take the hammer to it again. It would shatter into smaller pieces, and she would patiently put it back together. She would repeat this slow, painful excuse for catharsis until she had healed herself.
Duncan had not come home. Anna glanced at the clock over the kitchen table. Only a few hours remained of their tenth anniversary.
She knew how this would end.
He would come home early in the morning. She would smell gin, or perfume, or some odor of meat and chemicals from his laboratory. He would slur as he wished her a happy anniversary. Would say how pristine and pure she looked. She would smile. On her way out, she would kiss him on the forehead.
The midsummer night air would be refreshing this time of year. Her nostrils would be greeted by the scent of fallen petals lining the garden path. As she walked past the gate of her house, she would catch the faintest whiff of coal.
She would remember how she used to walk by the train tracks, when she was a girl. Back when she was still whole.
Once more, she would go skipping by the rails. Maybe now, under the pressure of all those years, the coal would have finally become diamond. And her steps would trace an exact line between the tracks, surrounded by a glittering cavalcade of gems.
And she would walk. And walk. Someday, she would find her perfect end at the verge of a distant horizon.
