the fragmented self. the splintered self. the self as a shard of glass. i broke a mirror once. i shattered my image, watched as my hand shattered my image before me. i broke ‘me’ into tiny shards. these shards are like the facets of the self. the mirror is made of shards of glass that form a cohesive whole, a whole image of a self—whoever’s self that stands before the mirror. you have to break the mirror in order to understand the way your self is fragments bonded together to form a whole image, a whole-looking façade. perhaps the cubists understood this best. they took all the facets and showed them simultaneously, so it was demonstrated before everyone that whole things are made up of parts, that everything is simultaneously broken and whole. a guitar. a self. cubism is broken glass. now I have scars on my knuckles.