Portrait of a life in fragment
by Mohammad Roshanara. First place in the Writory International Poetry Contest, August 2025, scored 94 out of 100.
I am not a whole picture- I am shards of glass scattered across years, each piece reflecting a different sun. A childтАЩs laughter lives in one corner, untouched by the dust of memory. In another, a cracked reflection- the silence of losses that never learned how to fade. I keep gathering myself like an archaeologist of my own soul, dusting off the ruins, trying to fit the puzzle that never promised completion. Some pieces are sharp- they draw blood when I remember too much. Others are soft, translucent, like petals pressed inside the diary of time. If you hold them up to the light, youтАЩll see- not a portrait, but a kaleidoscope: every fracture glowing, every scar refracting beauty. Because a life is not meant to be seamless. It is meant to be lived, broken, remembered- a gallery of fragments stitched together by survival. And perhaps the masterpiece was never the whole painting- but the way the shattered pieces still found a way to shine.
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