Matt Pin, the first-person narrator of All the Broken Pieces begins by recounting a murky, mysterious scene, brimming with unrevealed information. Matt opens by telling readers his own name. He continues, revealing that “her name” is Phang My, and “his name” is one Matt will never speak, though “forever [Matt] carr[ies]” (1) this man’s blood in Matt’s own body. Matt wonders if this mysterious “he” would recognize Matt if he saw him now, if the man would “see himself in [Matt’s] eyes” (1).

Matt carries Phang My’s blood and the memory of her in his own body as well. He remembers a scene of violence, “choking mist / and wailing dust” (2), and Phang My telling him he can’t stay where he is: “Here you will be like dust” (2). Amid the whirring of “helicopter prayers” (4) and mothers “begging soldiers to take / their children” (5), Matt leaves his homeland, as Phang My urges him to “Survive” (4). Matt’s adoptive father, who is American, tells him one day that Matt could find the strange man who shared a home with Phang My, but Matt is not interested in searching for a man who “did not come back” (7).