O Tile Floors! A Lament for Broken Things

In southern France, tile floors rule the day. Relegated to kitchens and bathrooms in the U.S., tile is the flooring of choice in my adopted homeland.

And they certainly are practical. They are easy to clean, remain cool on hot summer days, and are able to withstand an incredible level of abuse—all very important qualities when you have a house full of energetic children.

But, oh, the broken things! With tile floors, nothing survives a fall.

Countless wineglasses, plates, mugs, and fragile trinkets have fallen victim to tile’s unforgiving nature. When we first moved into our current house, I was surveying our new, teeny, tiny French kitchen and exclaimed to my husband, “There’s no way all our dishes are going to fit in here—we need less stuff!”

Be careful what you wish for.

Not two hours later, one of my twins managed to knock over a set of wineglasses that was waiting to find its place in a cabinet. Seven wineglasses hit the ground, exploding in every direction as small shards of glass ricocheted off the hard, slick floors. We were finding pieces of glass for weeks afterward.

Since that fateful day, many of our other possessions have met an early demise at the hands of our tile floors. As April is National Poetry Month in the U.S., I was inspired to honor all my many, many broken things with the following lament:

Lament for Broken Things

Cups, plates and other things of glass
Tumble to the floor en masse.
Horror as I see my platter—
Used for dinners long since passed—
Hit the tile, rupture, shatter.

F**k you, tile! I curse, I weep.
O the mess I must now sweep!
Tile! Why so unforgiving??
Fragile I sow, broken I reap.
Here’s to minimalist living!

Hope you enjoyed my little bit of verse! As Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”

Happy National Poetry Month!