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I stare at her smile, I watch her laugh. A funny feeling rolls inside me. It makes me want to shelter her, protect her from the world.
The girl in front of me looks back at me innocently as she bends down to pick up the broken glass pieces.
They are sharp and jagged, and her hand bleeds, but she does not care. She can see that the pieces, once joined, had been a rare and beautiful thing. So she is determined to fix them.
And suddenly, I am filled with contempt for her. She is deluding herself. Broken things never get fixed. Can she not see the cracks? Does she not care for the blood flowing out?
She senses my gaze and looks up at me. "No, I don't," she says, as though she had read my mind. She might be the only one who can - we did share a mind once, after all.
"Why?" I ask. "Why are you doing this, is it worth the pain?"
"Perhaps it is," she replies. "Don't you understand? My happiness is in putting the pieces back. I like fixing things."
" But - your hands!" I choke out. "It's going to kill you. And you - you're so weak that you can't find happiness in something else. You're going to cry tears of blood, soon. I know you are. And when you do, these things won't be there to hold your hand."
She looks doubtful. "I don't think a few minor cuts will kill me. Don't get so melodramatic."
I laugh. She knows nothing, does she?
"Those minor cuts will one day reach your heart," I tell her. "And then what will you do?"
She tosses her head with pride. "You would never understand. I'll never become anything like you. You are everything I have always hated. And I'm stronger than you'd think. Much stronger than you, who cannot bear to touch them because you're afraid of getting hurt."
And now, I laugh. "Afraid of getting hurt? I don't have anything left to hurt."
Yet, as I watch her carefully bandage her wounds and move on to other things - things she loves - I see the happiness. And I feel a pang of bitter envy, because I have nothing left to love.
It is true. I am weaker than her...or am I? We were the same, once. Perhaps this is why it bothers me now. The fact that I know exactly how she feels. Or the fact that I am now what she never wanted to be. The kind of person she hates. Just like I hate those glass shards.
I reach out my hand, try to touch her and feel nothing but cool glass. She is dead after all.
And boiling anger courses through me. "I hate you!" I shout at her. "How dare you make me rethink my decision? Who the hell are you to make me like this? You think the pain is worth it? No! It's never worth it! And you'll know it too when you die bleeding from those cuts, and those things you've tried to fix up stand on the mantelpiece and mock at you! And then you'll understand what I mean!"
I drive my fist into the mirror, see it splinter into a thousand cracks and fall to the floor.
I bend down, see the last remnants of the smile she had worn, reflected back at me, broken and cracked. Inexplicably, I pick up one of the shards - some habits don't go away, I guess. But perhaps I owe it to her memory. The sharp edges dig into my palm, and make the blood come out , but I don't throw it away.
I owe it to the memory of the person I once was.
Before those shards cut my heart open before I could even know.
Because I have known the pain of bleeding.
And the goodness that I once had, or the weakness - whatever I tell myself, can I throw away everything of myself?
Thoughts?
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