Reassembling Osiris

Searching for the broken pieces of yourself

Osiris butchered, scattered like multiple personalities

missing an organ or two, missing key clues

where do you begin to reassemble yourself?

the family cut and divided like chocolate cake —

consumed, no trace but flies and crumbs

the sticky glaze of traumatic residue

the only heart you feel beating being the heart of indifference

you can’t remember what happened, or who fired the first lethal shot

you look up from the dirty street to see a sea of strangers

other Osirises rushing by, broken, fragmented, a shell of themselves

even their laughter sounds off key, forced, feigned

for whose benefit? are they trying to convince themselves they are not in exile?

do they tell themselves they are happy, in sync, unified, whole?

we know better, we bitter Osirises with broken hearts and missing lungs

start where you are, say certain Buddhists, even if that starting place is in exile, broken, and dismembered

you never know where your own heart might suddenly turn up, or your forgotten child you have for so long buried

© Carlo Zeno 2023

You can read a brief summary of the Osiris myth here, which I loosely make reference to. In a nut shell, this old Egyptian myth has all of the ingredients of violence, dismemberment, trauma, remembrance, and reincarnation in it. It speaks to my personal experience, and I also believe it speaks to the human condition.

Thank you to the team at KTHT for continuing to provide a space for reflective pieces. Check out these two recent pieces below. 🙏

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