The Snowglobe

One thing I remember strongly about him was that snow globe. It had belonged to his mother, before she passed away. It always seemed that he carried the fragile bubble of fake snow everywhere, like a small child would a blanket or a superstitious person a luck charm. On occasion, we would sit around in the park, and he would pull it out of the backpack he always carried. His face would warm with a smile, but his eyes would turn stony and cold with sorrow.

He loved his mother.

But once, in the fall, as the leaves were slowly turning colors and drifting from their nestled places in the branches, we sat together by the polluted waters in the park trying to see how many dead fish there were in the water that day. I counted seven, but he could only find three. I knew there was something on his mind, and I also knew he wasn’t going to tell me.

Even if the waters were murky with death and poisonous substances, we still found it a beauty among things, with the yellow and orange leaves steadily falling into the lake.

After he gave up, he laid back and pulled out the snow globe. He held it in front of his face so the sun streamed through it and he shook it with caution. Fake, fat little flakes fell again to the bottom and he shook the dome again, this time with a little more vigor.

I lay down next to him in the dead leaves, watching the blizzard take place in the small thing. There was a small boy in the center, with a red hat that was looking up. Almost with longing as he stared out from the glass.

“Doesn’t he get lonely?” I asked, jokingly as he shook it yet again. He smiled sadly.
Sighing, he held the globe up and showed it to me. “He’s okay.” He had told me, turning the globe this way and that so that the glass glistened in the sun. “He may be alone, but he is trapped in a perfect world, right?”

I stared at him. The question was meant to be rhetorical, and I hadn’t expected an answer, but I loved the one I received anyway.