Kintsugi

Artwork by Timothy Chiu

By Mild Pichitpongchai

She found it on the street, chucked away to the side like a piece of junk. It was covered with a piece of cloth and taped all around. Out of curiosity she decided to carry it home, and when she unraveled it she was confused with what she saw: a rectangular wooden frame covered in cracks like a webbed glass mosaic gleaming in the sunlight. A shadowy figure emerged in the frame. The contours of its limbs were jagged, contorting along the cracks of the glass like a branch. The figure in the glass reminded her of a window, it showed her another dimension of the world trapped on the other side. She leaned in closer and saw the figure crept in, its tired brown eyes dispersed and confined within the pools of cracked glass, moving in synchronicity with hers.

Though lacking in the flesh and warmth of a physical person, she felt a connection with the figure unlike any other. Its movements resonated with hers in subtle ways, as if anticipating them before her muscles had even grown conscious of it. It seemed to understand her body language, always returning a longing gaze as if it was feeling her torment. For the first time she didn’t feel so lonely, she had hoped that there was someone or something who understood her, who saw right through the facade of her sweet but sulking eyes. 

“You look tired,” her friends would say. 

Yes, she was tired of carrying all the weight that constitutes a human being. People never fully bear the weight of themselves, their parts are scattered everywhere. Sometimes their energy is absorbed and diffracted by others, sometimes they split and inhabit the world as reflections, or their presence lingers in the photographs that belonged to others. 

But she bore all the weight herself. Though she was always whole that way, she felt selfish, and didn’t dare to let part of herself slip into other’s lives. Stories of her past, her emotions, and her beliefs were kept only for herself to indulge. So when she saw her own reflection for the first time in the mirror, she couldn’t recognize who it was.

 If only she can beckon the figure out of the glass somehow….  

She reached out her hand to touch the glass, dragging her fingers across tenderly. But the glass defended itself against the perpetrator, slashing her with its loose shards. She brushed her hand away, knocking over the frame, the glass shattered on the ground with a piercing scream.

She looked at the mess in horror, the figure in the frame was gone. Her only chance of connection was taken away. She knelt on the floor, her face buried under her chest, the blood from her fingertips dripping on the floor. The bits of broken glass grieved with her, glimmering like crystalized tears. 

Absent-mindedly, her fingers crawled towards the glass, it picked up a broken shard and returned it to the frame. Then she repeated the process again, and again. Most of the pieces were so fine like granules of sand that she couldn’t pick them up, while some were large enough that she could lay them next to each other. It was a torturous labor, and her fingers bled more as she grabbed the glass shards. She was numbed from the grief, the guilt, and the clumsiness of her own actions that she was grateful for this physical pain. The throbbing heat of her fingertips that felt the cold hard glass reminded her of her own mortality. Though beautiful and shimmering the glass was, it was lifeless and unchanging; though disoriented by blood, sweat, and tears she was, at least she still had a beating heart.

She slattered glue all over the bits of glass, and smoothed out the jagged edges so it wouldn’t hurt her again. Once she had patched together a sizable chunk of glass back onto the frame, she saw a faint resemblance of the brown eyes return. She polished the frame until it reflected back the sunlight with a garish whiteness. She stepped back, and the figure reappeared, but it wasn’t just a shadow, she could now clearly see body parts and limbs scattered all across the frame. She saw its bloodied hands, thinking that it was also injured, she reached out to the reflection and caressed it gently. This time the mirror didn’t cut her. The blood from her fingers slid down the grooves where its shards had been glued together, like a river carving out its capillaries, nourishing the land it had split. Then the mirror was whole again, its cracks disappeared into the clear image of a girl. 

She observed the girl in the reflection. Like herself it stood completely still, her sweat soaked hair like black tendrils creeping down her arms. The brown fingerprints from the oxidized blood marked her white shirt of the passing time that she neglected. Under the exhaustion, the reflection’s gaze showed a glint of awe and curiosity. It’s lone highlight bounced around the dark circumference her eyes like a flashlight, exposing years of secrets contained within the microdot of its pupil. 

She recognized those pupils, and the cryptic stories contained in them, they were hers, and she was staring into them like an intruder. 

She realized she was alone in the room after all. But alone in solitude.

She redirected her focus back onto the reflection, her gaze appearing a bit softer now. She realized she didn’t loathe herself as a stranger, but was rather attracted by the empathy she was given. In truth, there was a part of herself she loved so much that she was willing to endure a tremendous amount of suffering to salvage it. Seeing herself fully reflected back, she had understood now what it’s like to share a part of herself with others. It wasn’t like shedding weight, where one becomes lighter and thinner until there is nothing left that physically exists. It is not logical like math either where anything divided always results in a lesser value. What it is is creating new life, like a cell undergoing mitosis, both halves go on to develop and evolve into something greater than itself. She wanted her reflection close by, and decided to keep the mirror.

She opened the window, receiving the fresh snow that sprinkled on her warm hands, which melted and escaped through the crevices of her fingers. 

Somewhere not too far away, a river is forming.

Mild is a senior studying psychology with a minor in CAMS and linguistics. She is glad to have Generasian as an outlet to share something that others might find meaningful.