Glass mimics a fragility that I never had. A smooth surface as unyielding as a damn. Everything uneasy, all things roaring, just out of touch . I had never been glass. But that was until now. Until my preconceived strong skin eventually split like the picture I was staring at– No– at its own reflection.
Shattered crystals pebbled beneath my feet. Crunching like death dawned petals that had once encapsulated delicate life. And so I stared at the floor, at my reflection in each angled shard. I peered at a face just as broken as the fragments I carefully walked upon. Crunch.
My chin lifted, dotingly, while I glimpsed upon the fissures that now remained hanging along the rim of my window. The cracks which rippled like scars across mottled flesh that were just as frayed as my own. Where light bled through its ravaged ravines, I witnessed the sun’s presence through waning daylight. Although, this falling light had been golden, an angelic contrast to the colors that leaked through my own fractures– where raw scar tissue revealed red. Red. Red.
I stepped over a puddle of jagged pieces and sharp pain sliced through my flesh. This glass had been not the ordinance, but merely a mimicking catalyst. And too soon bottled up blood seeped through me, flowing freely as it pounded in my ears. Thumping and raging like a sieging storm to my sanity. To my stitches. The red roar of a bloody river turned that mirrored sunlight crimson.
Crunch.
One braved last look at the shattered mirror beyond my feet chanted: nine poor years of poor luck. I drew in that prophecy like one draws in a sharp breath. And ever so faintly, a breeze pulled the tears from my eyes with cold, unforgiving hands, as I matched it with a sob overtaken by another crunch of the world beneath my feet. I was so big, so weighty, and yet I felt so, so small.
Such a metaphor for something so inconsequential. Such a trifling comparison that even I find vain in some standards. But when broken meets broken, the world is nothing but a series of hazy collapse. And I went falling with it.
First on my knees. Bleeding onto the stone, blood flowing through the cracks like rivers. Then to my hands, where the stone drank my blood as if it were a desert soaking up sacred water. My blood seeped into its seams. And finally my forehead rested upon the carnage. Relishing in the soft kiss, the one yielding touch to my brokenness, as sharp lips pressed to my forehead like a lover. Like a slaver as two broken souls chained in company, but one held the sharp edge to skin. Like a liberator as we let those soft spots drain from our dams. We had been cut open.
So yes, such a metaphor from something so inconsequential. Such a trifling comparison that even I find vain in some standards. But understand, I had never been glass. Had never felt so fragile until our fragments conjoined like lost pieces of a puzzle. Broken and broken and broken, but together fitting.
So I simply stared at my reflection for the first time in a long time– not the physical features bestowed before me– but everything that shone through each angled fracture of crystal.
There was no escaping my bloody past with stitches of sanguineness. Stupidly out running the pain had unraveled everything step by ignorant step…only unleashing more.
DripDrip. The sound of petals falling that had once encapsulated life. DripDrip. Crack. A cacophony. An orchestra. A song that hummed like cheering crowds witnessing a magic trick. A crashing tune that drowned me down and down and down into its rhapsodic melody.
I tore my burning eyes closed, attending to my broken spirit where my heart hung suspended to a rope. To nine poor years of poor luck.
My heart hung like the suspended glass at the rim of my window. Fractured beyond repair. I couldn’t escape pain. Glass shards barricaded me within. There was a bloody battle mapped in every direction. My past. My promised future. And the present where I wept and let my dam crumble like paper.
My blood flowed like a river. Pain the very essence.
Glass had been no weaker than I and together our walls collapsed.