I didn’t even feel it. It was a perfect storm of can’t be bothered. Such a rich and vibrant symphony of haphazard bric-a-brac…culminating in the scalpel-like edge of a broken mirror finding its coda as it collided with my calf.

It was but a minor tickle, that instructed my eyes to gaze at the deep red bubbling well which had emerged.

I ascended the steep brick steps in a state of disbelief, blood flowing forth with the liberality of a Dublin tap.

‘Cold water.’ I fought my way past my curious pitador and turned on the shower. The stinging drops revealing the unsavory fact that I could see my fat.

I dialed my friend. Then realizing the full gravity of my situation dialed 911 and arranged for an ambulance.

The EMT’s and the doctor were good. I was transported, cleaned, and stitched in a reasonable span with only the minor sting of the local being the chief pain. Despite this, I do not savor the bills that are to come.

Economic and political kvetching can be addressed later if at all. For now that I have some time I feel it fitting to engage in some musings on fate.

Mirrors are famously unlucky. This fact coupled with that of the wound looking like an eye makes me wonder.

I’d often gazed at myself in that mirror tracking the progress of my calisthenic pursuits. Inspecting my expressions, whitling out weaknesses, evaluating flaw in carriage. Meditating on all the decisions that rendered me thus and so in these moments of reflection.

The mirror had been on my bedroom door. It had broken from too many forceful swings open. I’d taken it down and placed it outside near some trash cans, some number of weeks prior. I placed the shards on a coffee table that I’d picked up gypsy style from a rubbish heap on a midnight street corner. I’d discovered that the thing was too moldy for acquisition by the light of the following day. Had it not been placed just so by my trash cans and had I not taken only a half-hearted precaution, by merely making certain the shards weren’t vertical, I may not be in my present predicament.

The hustle to tidy up before Sunday company and the Monday grind…

All these things coming together as a strand of fate.

The eye-like shape of the laceration mirrors implications with inner sight, tease me with metaphysical implications.

Had I spent too much time cultivating my body…a body the insides of which were now revealed to be bloody strings and fat…

No.

A robust metaphysic requires a strong physique.

This was a lightning Memento Mori for which I am both grateful and annoyed.

A thing that contextualizes me in the great stream of ‘this is here, and that is there, and I am in its midst.’

Even as time is lost, a timeliness is gained. One of those strange nullifications…

Neither good nor bad as far as mortal ken extends.

Such is the breath of fate.