A Great Big Pile of Broken Things
I live surrounded by enormous mounds of shattered items. the remnants of lives lived, dreams realized, and lives abandoned. Every piece, a reminder of an era long gone. My reality is a database of splinters, an atlas of cracks. Here, in the midst of a junkyard that stretches out beneath an uncaring sky like a city of ruins, is the isolation I have chosen.
I sought solace here from a reality that seemed too real, too harsh. I found comfort in the embrace of trashed goods, feeling an odd connection to the broken and outdated. Here I found a haven, in this cemetery of the once loved. A place where the broken are honored and where the silence of the present coexists with the stories of the past.
I spend my days meandering through forests of splintered wood, rivers of shattered glass, and mountains of metal. Every step is a revelation, every finding a long-kept secret from another time. I try to rescue as much as I can, not because it's valuable but because of the memories and stories they hold.
On a day when the dust-choked sky held the sun heaving overhead, I found her among the ruins. A porcelain-faced doll, her hair matted with years of filth, missing one eye. The weight of indifference nearly erased her existence as she lay buried beneath a mound of abandoned toys. I removed her from her tomb, wiped away the dirt, and noticed a reflection of my own soul in her shattered face.
I named her Clara.
In the shadow of deterioration, Clara became my confidante and quiet observer of the soliloquies I enacted. I told her about my hopes, my anxieties, and the plethora of reasons that brought me to this abandoned spot. I saw empathy in her one-eyed stare, a mutual acknowledgment of being an outsider.
She listened even if our chats were one-sided. I was able to find the answers to questions I was afraid to speak out loud in her quiet. I learned the grace of acceptance and the beauty of imperfection from Clara, with her cracked smile.
But the junkyard, for all its stagnant serenity, is not immune to the passage of time. Storms come, winds that howl like the ghosts of industry, rain that falls like the tears of a world mourning its lost innocence. They rage against the bulwarks of my sanctuary, tearing at the edges, threatening to consume what little I have carved out for myself.
I lost her during one of these storms. My domain's topography was altered when a deluge of water carried away Clara, my silent sentinel. Through mud and mire, in the midst of the storm's mayhem, I looked for her. But she was gone, as if the very ground that had hidden her had taken her back.
I felt hollow in her absence, a void reflecting the holes in the broken objects all around me. Her passing served as a lesson on the transient nature of connection and a reminder of the impermanence of everything.
Clara’s short stay, in my life, demonstrated to me that even amid brokenness, there is beauty to be preserved and a tale worth sharing. She showed me that living amidst devastation means to rejoice in the ability to endure rather than to wallow in sorrow.
I reign over a nation where the broken are hallowed and every piece of debris is a shard of survival and resistance. In this place, I am both royal and subject. Here, among the immense mounds of broken things, I have discovered a home.