When I wake every morning, I rise as one, at once.

I look circumspectly in mirrors at pieces and then a whole.

Rarely, if ever, does it cross my mind that I am a puzzle in myself. That I am holed. It is in those rarities, though, when reality strikes me bold. Life happens fast. I have been trained to see me holistically, to supposedly understand me, but…

if you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found”

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning. Chest up. Blind to what I often find as excess weight around my waist, I glanced only quickly. I didn’t stare at the dark spots that lie between my not so perfectly arched eyebrows. Running my right pointer finger along my brow to “tone it down,” I didn’t even notice the chipped polish that even pure acetone would not remove from my fingernails. My braids are overdue for removal, but I wasn’t overcome with temporary phenotypical obsession. Instead, I stared into tomorrow, and the day after that. I remembered that today, I don’t know everything… That I won’t know it all tomorrow, or the day to follow, but that I could know just a little more than I did each day before.

I limped into my bedroom to stand affront a set of full length mirrors. I began to complain about the orthopedic boot I was wearing, the sweats and t-shirt I was forced into… I was, instead, riveted with the reflection of the countless books on my shelf that I’ve yet to read. It doesn’t always make sense to me, how my mind works; I don’t always get it. In that moment, I realized that I was in a state of brokenness, that I am broken, though not breaking every day. I am whole only because of who I know and accept, but broken because of what I’ve yet to learn.

It was today that I accepted brokenness as a gift. When I’d hear, before, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” I naturally assumed that if it was, it needed fixing. Perhaps some of you may look at my incomplete picture and imagine it is broken, I do not. My holed self is a work in progress, my potential.

I gawked astutely at myself this morning, paying close attention to detail. I am overcome with joy that in every day of my future lies aggrandized contentment.

First in a while,
Sammie ❤️

P.S. I just might be back.