As the sculptor strikes the stone

Shards spray and dance across the floor

The finely carved figure emerges

While haphazard shapes litter the room

Every stroke of the hammer deliberate

Breaking away the undesirable

Leaving only the ideal standing

But the dross is no less the stone 

The statue gets trotted out

Put on display to be beheld

To be interpreted

No less by the patron than by the artist himself

The shards of becoming

Cast on the floor

I keep them

Collect them

Hidden away for they are mine alone

The pointy sharp shrapnel

Created by the violent process of self definition

Are we all not defined as much by what is gone as we are by what remains?

This heavy sack of stone shavings

The sum of all that has been taken and worse, freely given

Far greater than what is left

Is the burden of what has been lost 

Just a dude who loves to write. Technical by day, philosophical by night.