Grief in Glass
By Lyss Buchthal
The first time it happened, Peril was fourteen.
She stepped out of the shower, and the beads of water rolling off her body turned into marbles. All the droplets in her hair too—tiny pearls of glass, shaking loose, flying everywhere.
She didn’t know why, beyond the fact that she felt sad and alone in the body-breaking kind of way, where it was all too big to fit, and the next moment was impossible and inevitable and deeply, deeply dangerous.
But there she was, wrapped in a towel, completely dry, ankle-deep in what once was water, but now served as a crystalline monument to her sorrow.
Getting rid of the marbles seemed wrong. None had broken, though they’d made a ruckus on the tile, splashing in the open toilet, cracking against the window.
She gathered every last one, pouring them into a tall vase.
She looked at them sometimes, wondering if her sadness would ever be so beautiful again.
For years, it wasn’t.
Puberty passed. The magic of that miserable moment faded to memory.
Then, when she was twenty-two, there was Temple.
Soft and funny, a salve for Peril’s loneliness, which had dulled but never disappeared.
The first time Temple saw the vase, she plucked out a marble without asking, lay on her stomach, and flicked it between Peril’s sock-clad feet.
Peril laughed.
The vase emptied as marbles traced new paths across the floor, Temple mapping her way through Peril’s heart.
Peril should have known how it would end.
Temple was aptly named—an altar to a god who didn’t agree with their love.
An altar Peril would happily sacrifice herself upon if she were allowed, glass tears skittering over cold, cold marble rather than bouncing across her carpeted bedroom floor, silent in the shockwave of a freshly slammed door.
Lyss Buchthal (they/them) is a US-based writer whose work centers queer Americana, primarily themes on identity, perception, and power. Alyssa’s writing appears or is forthcoming in The Orange & Bee, Foofaraw, Pipeline Artists, and Neon Dystopia.
Wow!
Beautiful piece!