When I was young, I focused
More on my companions
Than on my calling.
Older now, I fixate
More on that calling
Than those companions.
At each point, I thought
the one more important
Than the other.
At each point,
I was wrong.
Now, my life runs backwards,
Reassembled in the wrong order
For the wrong reasons.
Like a mirror, once broken
The past can be rearranged
But never fully restored.
Deep cracks remain,
Shattering the image
Of who I thought I was,
Of who I thought
I would be.
Afraid to wake,
Afraid to sleep,
I will never rest comfortably
In that frame again.
© 2025 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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This piece is on the same theme as Shattered from almost a year ago. There are themes and imagery that seem to recur and resonate when I write, which likely means I’m not done with them or didn’t feel I fully captured them. Like my mind is trying to process something using the convenient symbols it understands.
The first two lines of the last stanza were the first that came to me in the middle of the night and got jotted down. When I started to write the piece around it, it took a different direction than I expected.
In college, I always made time for people at the expense of my coursework, and it showed in my grades until my final year. Now, as I continue to read and learn while others spend their time with their families, peeps, and BFFs, I wonder if I read life’s script from back to front.
I find I spend a lot more time now thinking about my longer past than my shorter future, where it went wrong and how it can’t be fixed. Like that dream you have where you are trying to accomplish something that you just can’t, for whatever dream logic gets in your way. You know it’s a dream, but you still wake up thinking about how you might have solved the problem if only you had another chance.
Probably not productive, but then, what is in the final analysis?
This image was Edward’s idea. It started with the idea of a shattered mirror. You may sense a theme here. Broken mirrors have appeared as illustrations before. So we needed another way to depict a mirror without wholly repeating ourselves. Edward suggested that we use the hand mirror in the bathroom, reflecting an image of him, with the mirror broken. That’ll work. And off I went.
ReplyDeleteI started by taking a picture of my hand holding the mirror so that both would have the same perspective. I used that as a base, tracing both the mirror’s shape and the shape of the hand. Then came the fun parts. I mapped some wood grain to the mirror’s form and added light and shadow to give it dimension. I found a graphic of skin tones for hand, then added highlights and shadows from those colors to give it depth. The picture of Edward was from 2014. I found a tutorial on line that demonstrated how to turn a photo into a “line drawing”. Once I had that, I mapped that image into the center circle of the mirror, then “dissected” it to create the individual shards. Next I shifted the mapped image in each piece to make it look like each one was catching his reflection slightly differently. Touch up the shadows, add a background and it was done.
Many images are collections of different pieces, put together to create a whole. Like reassembling who we think we are from the pieces of our past, making the whole person we are today, but never exactly the way we were before, nor will be tomorrow.