Love is the Thing

The bowl was given to the lovers

as a wedding present. It looked like this once:

waves of pastel colour like northern lights, flowers with undulating petals and foliage, arcs, curves, roundness.

Filled with rosepetals at first, it turns into a holder of losing lottery tickets.

A child knocks it off the mantelpiece and everyone glues it back together.

The house is haunted by the ghost

of its perfection.

Finally one of the lovers destroys it.

Love is broken too.

They are bitter that the precious thing is gone.