Breaking the Glass

A layer of fine, thin glass that breaks at the slightest touch. That’s all that separates my world from theirs. My world, a never-ending summer of blooming roses and birdsong, and theirs, a never-ending winter where they bathe in the snow and smile at death in the cold. Only a layer of the most fragile glass bars me from them, and them from me.

I touch the glass, and it shatters into a million little pieces, and gets carried away in the wind. My summer fades away as I walk towards this dismal place. Here, I am a stranger. I am an alien, a trespasser. But soon enough, I will be shedding my own clothes and dancing under the snowstorm. I will become one of them. I am seduced, captivated by this numb world of cold and shadows.

Them, all of them, they eat poisonous berries and relish their demise. They kill their own kind. Some special tree which grows in snow, a magical tree, they plant it on the ground and throw the fruits away. They throw them away to rot in the cold. They love how the darkness blinds them and cradles them in its depths.

And now, slowly, painfully, I begin to understand: this is my world now.

The breaking of the glass, it is a choice.

- HB 052506