I’m told that once
I was a nugget,
hard, small, and spare.

Hard to say if I’d been
made that way
or ground down
from a larger stone.

I had no surface area.
I had no depth. If I’d 
been hammered open, I bet
I would have looked the same
all the way through. 

At least,
that’s what they tell me;

I can say for certain that
however I was first made, later on
I was indeed hammered open,
tossed into forge
level heat, plucked and 
tossed into a quench
that shaped me, charged me,
changed me into 

this, or so I tell myself: this

multi-hued, burned-in
iridescence; these fractures
smooth and gritty; these 
materials as tough and complex
as I once was simple.

Or so I say when asked

to avoid thinking
that after all,
all I am is still
a nugget that’s been
hammered open. 

Maybe all I am
is a broken nugget
and not one of great interest, but
instead just a smaller piece
of something as ordinary as dirt.