Shatter

EDIT: In hindsight perhaps this piece doesn't truly belong in this forum, and if it does not I apologize for the inconvenience. This is a work of prose poetry, a style that defies categorization sometimes. Rather than giving much detail on story, character, plotting, etc., prose poetry relies on repetition of language and extended metaphors to create powerful imagery and strong emotion. This work is, for the most part, intentionally vague and enigmatic, up for the reader's interpretation. Tell me absolutely what you think of this in your critiques, but I'm looking more for a critique on language and style than plotting, since it's not straight prose this time around. :)

"Shatter"

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

Fragments of glass reflect pieces of her. Lily-white skin. Primped curls the color of spun copper. A button nose. Cherry ribbon lips. Opaque forget-me-not blue eyes. The black pupils dilate and swivel, dilate and swivel, but her eyes are sightless. She sees what is in front of her, but not what is inside her.

She sees her face separately in each shard of glass. A multitude of reflections, some small, some large. Each one a clone of the other, each with a twin. Never alone. Breathtaking symmetry. She aches for it.

Her fingers graze the mirror, cold and hard like marble. It is a symbol of frailty, yet one of immense power. What lurks beneath the razor-thin surface of a mirror? Her fingertips thirst for the reflections before her.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

The curtains unveiled her. Pretty as a doll. Silent as a mannequin. Lifeless as a marionette with no one pulling her strings.

Beneath the spotlight’s hot chemical gaze, an image clearer than in a cracked-but-not-shattered mirror. The lipstick glued to her lips, the blush caked upon her face, the red circles flaring on her cheeks. A freakish sight fit for the vaudeville.

There was silence, and sometimes laughter.

The fat tears rolled down her cheeks, leaving clean tracks in the makeup.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

Prone to melancholy, she muses. To be cracked like the mirror. All the pieces together, but not completely complete. Complete completeness terrified her.

Her own eyes see clearly, truthfully--blindly. Broken eyes. To see through the distorted beauty of a cracked mirror is an authentic sight. To have cracked eyes, fragmented eyes. Each pane of glass an identical view. An utterly symmetrical existence. Companionship. Beautiful.

Absentmindedly she traces the cracks, raised and tangible like scars, to the single point from which they all deviate: the point of contact, the point of brilliance.

Contact. She breathes the word in a reverential hush. Contact. To be touched again. A sweet, remote concept.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

On display, trapped in the glass casing. No sound entered. Only the harsh light slanting from above, and the moving images before her, seen through the transparent wall. Her own reflection was a phantom blurring the outside world.

The hot, stuffy security of the glass casing unnerved her. The glass was not cracked and not shattered. A terribly beautiful abyss.

To be seen but not touched: her impeccable features, her flawless complexion, her rose-embossed dress. Admired, but from afar. The widened eyes devouring her. Tingling her spine. The mouths agape, as though mutely howling in hunger. For her.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

Unbroken glass is a cruel realist, dismantling the illusions. A pristine mirror inspires only terror and memories within her. Terror and memories.

A cracked mirror is a paradise. A mirror that reflects nothing but truth is a venomous trap, a trap clinging to her with oppressive heat, thirsty metallic eyes, a sickly smile.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

Surrounded by her sisters in the glass casing, full to the brim, yet she was hollow within. Hollow--a strange lovely word for a strange lovely state of being. It was an emptiness like a unhatched egg with no chick inside.

Hers was a natural emptiness, however. When she was shaken, whether in delight or wrath, the faint tinkle always sang. It was the tinkle like a gently breaking wineglass that afflicted her sisters as well. An unmistakable sound, like the shrill cry when a dead lightbulb is shaken. A soothing, shattered melody.

The porcelain of her surface revealed the hollowness within her. For porcelain is not bone--inside there is no marrow. A girl that loves porcelain too much will always have her heart broken, for the cold white surface, kissed with pink, is all that may be offered.

Despite her fear, she wept for the starving eyes and gaping mouths. The nothingness inside her always disappointed them.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

How similar she is to the mirror…

Born to surrender. Broken, beaten, savaged too many times to recall. Each wound was a new lifetime. Every time, the blood issued forth from her eyes, her mouth, her limbs, crimson and sticky like raspberry syrup, bathing her. The liquid filled her newly ruptured cracks and hardened. Then, she returned to the glass casing. The chided chant resounding outside the transparent cage: Must be gentler!

She was still in one piece, yet incomplete. Like a cracked-but-not-shattered mirror. Incompletely whole. Imperfectly perfect. Beautiful.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

She longs to be blind forever. When the raspberry blood streamed from her eyes she was blind. Why is her blindness only temporary? Why must she be wounded, why must she be in pain, to experience the orgasmic splendor of blindness?

The reflections in the fractured mirror hold no guile for her now. So many reflections! Too many to count.

She gazes closer… Deep down within the spiraling reflection of a single eye, lies the shadow of another reflection. Reflection upon reflection, face upon face, eye upon eye.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered.

Anguish dawns, rises upon her. Where does it end? What is real? What is realer than a dream? What is realer than the past? Thoughts ambush her like a virulent plague.

It frightens her. So much frightens her. Irresistible completeness strikes both awe and terror in her.

Her delicate hands ball into fist, her fingers like tapering sheets of metal. Her porcelain whets into a blade. An inexorable desire rising, groaning within her grossly perfect shell.

The mirror is cracked but not shattered…

With her flawless claw, she smashes the cracked mirror. It shrieks one final time as it bursts. The dead air absorbs the sound of breaking glass. The fragments cascade. A moment’s pause. The silence embraces the passing of the mirror’s life. Fluorescent lights glare below at her triumph. Beneath her lie the pieces, abandoned and unwanted like broken teeth. No longer part of an incompletely whole work of wonderment.

…The mirror is shattered.

Comments & reviews · 3
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User avatar
Kale
Review
Kale wrote a review · Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:28 pm

You had some lovely imagery here, and I especially liked how you compared blood to raspberry syrup. The thing is, while some of your imagery was very concrete and easy to visualize, other images struck me as vague and ill-defined, while others struck me as far too literal. In addition, some of the words you used weren't employed as well as they could have been, and the way you used them was a bit shaky ("authentic" comes to mind), and you had a couple of tense shifts. Because of that, I got the impression that this was more a vignette than a prose poem, and the tense shifts were particularly jarring.

I actually liked the repetition of "The mirror is cracked but not shattered." I think it really reinforces the main theme well, but I do think, near the end, it got a tad repetitious. There wasn't as much space between the iterations as the beginning, which makes the repetition far more noticeable, almost glaringly so. I think you could cut out two of them without hurting this piece, one after "a sickly smile" and the other after "eye upon eye".

User avatar
emmylou1995
Review

Well! very beautiful!

Okay, there were a few things wrong with this.
Too much repetition! You said the same thing over and over and over again! It just gets old. But, on the other hand, a little repetition adds to the...um story.
This is very unclear. What are you saying? I understand there is a girl, blind is she, or not? And there is a porcelain doll. What is the meaning. There is much imagery and emotion in this story, yet, it lacks an actual story line. It is plainly many things repeated twice or three times. What is your story about? What are the characters like? What is the setting? What is the conflict?
Answer these questions, it may help.
Again, very beautiful, some parts made me want to cry. I loved your words but think about what i said. It could be better. PM me if you fix it.



"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
— Pablo Neruda