The Shattered Mirror
The world feels broken these days. Every morning when I wake up, it's like staring into a shattered mirror, with cracks running through the reflection. The news is full of conflict, injustice, and human suffering on a mass scale. Sometimes it feels hopeless, like there's nothing I can do to make a difference.
But then I remember Grandma Rose's mirror. It was an antique, passed down through generations, with an ornate golden frame. One day, it slipped from my clumsy child hands and shattered into a thousand pieces on the hardwood floor.
I'll never forget the look on Grandma's face - not one of anger or disappointment, but of wisdom. She knelt down beside me as I cried over the shards of broken glass. "Why are you crying, my dear?" she asked gently. "The mirror is not gone. It is simply...changed."
She helped me gather the pieces carefully, wrapping them in a cloth. Over the next few weeks, she spent hours each day meticulously gluing the shards back together. When she was done, the mirror looked like a crazy abstract stained glass window, with cracks zig-zagging across its surface.
"There, you see?" she said, smiling at our masterpiece. "It's more beautiful than ever before. The cracks are a part of its story now, a map of all its broken places that have been rejoined. Those cracks make it unique."
Grandma kept that glued-together mirror for the rest of her days. And every time I look at the world's cracked reflection now, I think of her lesson. Yes, the world is broken in many ways - but that means there is immense potential for discovering new beauty in the shards, if we have the patience and resilience to remake it into something better.
You don't change the world by giving up or giving in to cynicism. You change it by seeing the cracks as an opportunity, not the end. By helping one person at a time. By being kind to your neighbor, and encouraging your community to do the same.
About a year ago, I decided to start volunteering at the local soup kitchen one day a week. I'll never forget the first time I served food to the long line of people, seeing the grateful smile on an elderly woman's face as she took the tray of hot stew from my hands. In that fleeting moment, I could see her humanity, her struggle, and her inherent worth as a person - not just another person experiencing homelessness and food insecurity. The smallest act of service was a reminder that even in a broken world, we can start re-assembling the shattered pieces through compassion.
Little by little, these acts of service and sacrifice can merge the fragments into something new, something more resilient than it was before. Whenever the weight of the world's suffering seems too much, I try to focus on making one piece of the mirror a little less broken, one person at a time.
My friend Ali started a neighborhood watch program in her community when crime became a major issue. She didn't stop there, though - she worked to connect young people who had gotten mixed up with gangs or drugs to counseling resources. Over the past few years, she has helped create a community support network that has given so many a second chance.
My co-worker Marcus started tutoring refugee children in English and math, knowing that education is the key to building a new life of opportunity in a new country, free from persecution.
These people aren't heroes, just ordinary folks who decided to stop waiting around for the world to fix itself. In their own way, they have become skilled craftspeople, carefully glueing together the shards of our shattered societies, creating something more resilient and beautiful in the process.
The cracks in the world's mirror will never fully disappear. There will always be a new hazard, a new injustice to face. But if we all commit to doing our part to address those shattered places with love and service, piece by piece, the masterpiece will only become more striking over time.
When times seem darkest, I imagine myself as a child again, sitting next to Grandma Rose as she patiently reassembles that broken mirror. I hear her words of wisdom echoing through the years: "These cracks are a part of its story now...These cracks make you unique." These cracks are part of a larger whole. I hear my grandmother's voice which is soothing, reminding me that I can alwats restart my day....
Not quite 9
In 1989
I awoke in Ladispoli,
an inception of consciousness rose from the bed with me…
disarming my sleep,
against dust with form and rhythmic quality
I tiptoed to the opened balcony…
Bums in the sewers sang in their
sea salted skin.
While the Tyrrhenian nightfall aired, gasping from dream
I slumped my eyes over crumbs and a council of pigeons beneath…
The timing and tone teased unrest from my heart.
As I watched the galaxy part with its lights.
Enough for walls of the buildings to weep.
While the sky opened its eye and stared right back into me
I went BOOM!
and swallowed it whole with the stink and perfume making gods in the point of the light in me.
I grow a visceral fever right here
in between line breaks and stanzas
where time shows and
reveals in a space
my Borrowed
and Drifting
stages of Wandering
Babel
Once upon a yesteryear,
My size three steps
Were but youth’s aching metronome
And vibratory pulse
Afoot our day glow playground
Of raucous rendezvous,
An atom bomb
Of impish haunt.
Do you hear our faded ricochet
That held imprints
From babble to Babel,
As oblivion’s snow white noise
Clapped out peals
Of static and canned laughter,
When a man, long since dead, yelled;
“Howdy Doody Time?”
And we char the page
With our snapshot flash,
Flame licked lightening
A memorial to the poetry
Of our animatic dance.
We were once black riders
Of the technicolour age,
Too young to die,
Too young to fade.
Do you hear our faded ricochet
As the gloaming eats the light?
While the murmurs rattling Saturn’s cage,
Hang halos in the night?
Memory’s weeping willow eyes
Drop their anchor lids aground,
As patchwork quilted souls of time
Are lost and never found.
For ashes are but derelict heirlooms,
Turned kilter, upside down,
And our childhood in Babel,
Sleeps hushed on fallow ground.
Mountains, crooked arms of the moon, send rain, and where you cope.
'Mountains' by Prince started the morning off right, winding around a few stones of Prose., one legendary, preceded by two new bloods whose words cut through like butter beneath blade. Beautiful words from these measured and magnificent artists. Kick back, but also let it all fall off the sides and get into the words of these writers. Smooth and rich, like coffee, like all things that last.
Here's the link to episode 32 on Prose. Radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTiBo32fmDs
And here are the featured pieces.
https://www.theprose.com/post/814678/10-minute-walk https://www.theprose.com/post/814650 https://www.theprose.com/post/814328/news-flash-it-appears-that-its-not-so-much-how-you-cope-as-where-you-cope
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
News-flash: It appears that it’s not so much ‘how’ you cope as ‘where’ you cope
To all my friends who might happen to be Jewish,
I am truly sorry for the way you are being treated and will stand beside you to the end.
I hope you are seeing what is happening at the U Of F, Ole Miss, U of A, and UNC, among other great southern universities. For myself, I thank the good Lord for my Southern heritage, a heritage which might have been tainted a ways back, but is standing tall as toddy today. I am on my way this weekend to one of those Southern universities to see my grand-daughter graduate. I would like to thank those kids who have guaranteed that my trip is set off upon with a great amount of pride. I am somewhat ashamed to admit to having and sharing in my stories on this site my poor opinion of our colleges and universities (or more specifically of the educators who are filling those universities with rot), but I am so very proud to see that the rot has not infected you all. That shines!
God Bless America and Yeehaw you Intifada sons of biscuits. Go crawl back under whatever
rock you crawled out from.
Sincerely,
Huckleberry Hoo
I didn't win the vagina lottery
wasn't born with one
haven't been able to find one
ready willing able to hold me
even for that little bit of time
for me to spew renew
left to my own devices I fall
on my knees and say words
directed to the vast heavens
take away this blasted curse
send rain wash me
cleanse my aching soul mind
hands clenched white tears
unashamed I can't do it by
myself alone unassisted sole
help help me Rhonda
Abba Hercules Diane
I can't make it one more day
10 minute walk
In the park there's Gypsy technicians
engineering freedom around the oak trees that lead to nowhere.
And I would have hung around
saddled in the stars titling in the shadow of foreheads passing by.
I would've dragged the constellations nearer to the earth.
A midnight blue scattered around my waist.
Turning gold in the pink flesh of the crooked arms of the moon.
In February.
But,
I'm capturing blood in my head instead.
Dashing mentally into what seems an eternal corner.
Rolling in cross legged nothings of restless meditations and spent cigarettes choked between my fingers.
I am hungry.
And I don't dance very much anymore.
I sigh about it and start to believe it.
Sing it like a song.
Biding my time
battling the urge to break bread under a bridge...
Losing my sense of traffic upon the rivers dimpled wave smaller than a hush- booming-
make room for my eyes caught in the privacy of trash bags whistling against the wind.
Required
Due to the unbalanced nature of Daniel Moors' testimony, when the drugs had been almost absent, it was readily apparent that psychological dependence had set in. And at the moment he had desperately needed his vice.
However the young man had luckily had enough lucidity to not antagonize the officers or much move when called for a disturbance in the estate.
Due to his incoherence, his erratic behavior prior, due to the fact that the younger brother was petrified with eyes blown wide and drenched but otherwise uninjured on the patio a social worker was called in.
The parents had lost control. Realized so months ago when their son had punched a wall in an exhausted, irritable state one night.
And as it stood had no means or authority as parents to have corralled destructive behavior and violent language.
Olli had become something of a doll, otherwise unaccounted for in matters of the house, in the instances Daniel sober or not deigned to notice him. Sometimes he was in a hugging and crying mood. Other times he was in a venting mood.
He screamed at ten year old Olli on such occasions.
It was scary.
Even though his screams had demanded him to stay there, in one place, far from him while he was so angry.
His eyes had learned to track the movements of those bigger. Take mental note of how they paced, how long their strides, how measured or how agitated.
And from the very start he'd not trusted Dr. Eddal. Hadn't wanted her there.
From the start a requirement to shelve the entire ordeal as resolved was for the parents to submit Olli to a counselor for care.
Specializing in abused children.
She'd been used to horrible. And in some occasions yes, the children did turn into statistics into her mind.
She could only hope every day, try a little harder every day that those ill-suited tracks of thought never showed.
Dr. Eddal first consulted with Olli late at night, not long after Daniel had been detained and formally registered into rehab. Rather than her regular office it had been in a hospital.
The parents or Uncles, the adult family members were often the most common culprits. But there were always the times-- where, "the brother in his stupors would talk in coarse language, extort the child, blackmail and demand from the child to keep his silence."
"We do not believe physical force was applied."
"Marks designated to be 'with intent' are few and far between. Most if not all are now old and partially healed."
She answered his questions.
She asked her own, of how he felt of what he liked and who he liked. What did he do at certain times of the day and when he ate. How was school? There had been a note that he tried out for his basketball team and had been a rat in the Nutcracker show that winter.
Eddal did her utmost to reassure he was a person. A valued person who'd been undeservedly mistreated. In a way no one deserved to be treated.
And with time, in their eighteen months together she hesitated, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be unprofessional if he considered her a friend.
If it meant his fear of adults all but faded.
Once he'd graced her with his voice, well, she certainly laughed a great deal. She clapped when he showed her the steps for the rat's solo in the Nutcracker. She listened as rules were enforced and the candy and cookie jars were placed out of his reach.
It was a transitionary period: from indulgent negligence to authoritative.
She reminded him it was out of love. She reminded that it was his decision and his alone to see Daniel, to contact his older brother-- his older brother with an illness who had hurt him, who had known so to some level-- when it was safe. Safe for Olli physically and safe for Olli mentally.
She only saw him twice-more after the eighteen months were up.
Three years later and she'd have to correct that.
Setting her purse on the seat beside her a coffee mug had been slid into her hands.
"Thank you ma'am," Daniel said quietly.
Olli had allowed his brother to borrow his phone to call for a consult.
The boys' parents were at the moment, at Olli's school for a conference about recent behavioral issues. Before they were to realize the younger son had set them up to leave.
"Everyone else thinks I was hallucinating what I saw on that road. I'd be a little less pissed if they at least gave me a chance to speak."
"I'd read about that in the papers. You claim to have seen--"
"A ghost maybe, best way I could think to describe it when my head had been cut clean through with my windshield mind you."
Daniel Moors was terse but otherwise composed. He kept his temper and sighed out his frustrations.
"So," he continued with an obstinate shrug, "I hired three high-school freshmen. Okay, two freshmen and my brother."
The Cumberland Breeze Moved Still [revised]
We hid under the Mulberry tree that had been scarred by the knives of Southern mischief two summers ago. He was seated across from me on a turquoise antique. The afternoon held its breath for us as he offered me his hand resting palm-up on my knee. And it unfolded slowly. His angled posture was straight, leaning forward to complete the missing half of my triangle. And his eyelids were partly drawn, set meditating on my forthcoming move. When I placed my hand upon his, for a moment, I was a child. I found safety in his comfort, but our love was a wildfire. The shade caressed the mood and from behind its veil of landscape, the sun eavesdropped and he sighed. Sweet molasses lacquered my heart and its beat bellowed baritone. He smiled. Then too abruptly I retrieved my hand from his to salvage a silkworm lost on his shirt. And with that, our moment became a memory We lost grip of our hope. But removed from the chaos happening everywhere around us, we spent one stolen hiccup in time under a tree with each other. And it was perfect.