BROKEN
     by Sarah Elizabeth Hume

  How much more broken can the spirit be
  when it can no longer bend to face the blowing wind?
  It will only snap like the branches of a long dead tree
  dried by the heat of a rainless summer.


  That is how I am now,
  waterless,
  with shriveled roots and twisted branches
  that refuse to bend,
  broken far beyond bone and flesh.
  I fear too deep to sew or mend....

  I am broken....