Ramblings #9 - Broken

I broke my champagne glass yesternight.

That little fragile thing, so lost on the side of a dishwasher where it clearly doesn’t belong, felt the brush of my hand and with it, the rushed pain of death. But does something inanimate feel?

Can it die? I wonder if I’m asking this question to my late glass or to me, for as per me it had ceased to exist in my life – only good as a metaphor for how broken people are. How simple yet hard it can be to break them.

Even as I tried to gather the pieces of this once proud ornament (for it was that, given my lack of regular drinking habits), I heard thunder rumble outside. With faint surprise, it registered that the rains had started. When you stop expecting, that is when they creep up on you – as if we are all in some grotesque by-the-numbers horror movie.

So, a storm outside was beginning while another started inside by a broken piece of glass lying serenely as it gazed back at me in contempt. At my existence – the murderer presented!

Guilty? Not guilty? My plea is to be both. I am the murderer. I am the victim.

Growing curious, I picked up the parts. They were big enough to hold and curiously, not sharp enough to prick my soft fingers. I wondered for the briefest moment if I could make it whole again.

But no, sadly that is never the answer. You can make it whole from the outside, but this now poor excuse of a beverage container was never to be the same again. Useless little thing.

I opened the trash bag and gathered the pieces, dropping them off into the abyss. One last glance and I saw my reflection on the glass – it frightened me.

We dispose things of little use to us so flippantly don’t we? But what of the ones we can’t dispose – the broken little fragments of us we leave behind as we move forward. Could we ever just open a trash bag called the past and leave it there.

The past haunts us, it defines us and measures our every step into the future.

‘Leave behind’ – as if we could! A smirk of misfortune graces my face.

Lightning, rain and thunder outside have now subsided and I am faced with a graver tempest rumbling on my doorstep. That tears away at the very fabric of sanity I hold onto. The glass taunts me even as I keep the bag outside – you can throw us away, but can you do the same to yourself?

Am I disposable? How can I answer, when I fail to understand the question itself?

Life, death – a merry go round of emotions trap me, blind me even as I hear the echo of something shatter.

Did it come from the kitchen? Did it come from outside, where that wretched broken glass lies?

Did it come from inside me?