on breaking mirrors

a brief report from the week the universe tried to body-slam me

about a month ago, the universe put me in a chokehold. i’m talking the kind of bad luck that stacks itself like jenga blocks then kicks its own tower down. i came down with a week-long flu that humbled me beyond language. delirious. aching. catatonic. the kind of sick where you start thinking in static.

at one point i dragged myself out for more medicine and parked myself in a coffee shop to feel human. i wrote a whole post that will never see the light of day because it reads like cough-syrup fanfiction about misfortune. and even in that fog i managed a new personal low: i got a call from a delivery driver who couldn’t get into my gate. language barrier.

so i sprinted out to my car to go meet him, and left my laptop sitting on the table. not just my laptop. my laptop and messenger bag that had all of my back up hard drives and thumb drives that had more than my social and every photo and essay i’ve ever written on them.

i didn’t even realize it was missing until the flu delirium released me. it wasn’t until three weeks later when i finally checked my instagram message requests that i found out where it was. the coffee shop had tracked me down. more on that in a moment.

that same flu week, i also slipped in my shower like a life alert commercial. no bath mat. tile slick as philosophy. i hit the floor so hard, my shoulder and sides are still healing. i even had the sharp little thought: so this is how they’re going to find me. this is the end of clark. how poetic. no one was checking in. no texts. no calls. no “hey are you alive?” nothing.

by friday, i crawled to urgent care for real drugs. i came home, shut a closet door, and that’s when it happened. the giant oval mirror i thrifted months ago fell forward and shattered. an explosion of shards, from dollhouse-sized weapons to microscopic little toe-slicers waiting to rip through any trash bag i tried to dispose them in.

my first thought was great, seven more years of this shit. but here’s the twist. the mirror was the turning point. a denouement of sorts, except the story is still going up and down. but the bad luck evaporated.

by monday, i woke up well enough to head to work. my coworkers suddenly treated me like the copywriter they hired, not some workflow bottleneck with a pulse.

on my walk to lunch, a laundromat street team stopped me and filmed content with me and handed me a hundred dollar gift card.

my parents showed up in miami on a whim and treated me to bal harbour luxury that i could never have afforded on my own.

i wrote an instagram bio for my office manager, and she thanked me by giving me the ceo’s heat tickets at the kaseya center to go see the kaytranada x justice north america tour: fall ‘25.

creative lightning struck. real lightning. i landed wall space in a wynwood omakase restaurant and wine bar for art basel. check out my new arto ego and work at ELCLARKO.COM

the next week, someone accidentally zelled me $400. i returned it, of course. i’m not an animal. but still. the vibes were flowing.

and then the universe completed the arc. i was reunited with my laptop, safe and unbothered like it had spent three weeks at a wellness retreat.

so here’s my tiny thesis: when the mirror shattered, something shifted. i don’t believe in luck, and i’m not superstitious, but the broken mirror thing is coded into me like holding doors open for everyone. i just want to formally report that i shattered a massive mirror and lived to tell you about it.

so next time you catch yourself tossing salt over your shoulder or making a wish at 11:11, don’t. skip the ritual. let the universe improvise. sometimes the glitch is the blessing.

and if the cosmos ever starts body-slamming you, take it from me. you might just be one broken mirror away from the plot twist.