She’s as fragile as glass. Words chip away at her until she starts to crack. When the fissures start to show, she fills them with glue, hoping to mask the pain. Physical wounds leave scuffs that she easily wipes away—it’s easy to not feel the physical part when she’s being ripped apart internally. Some scuffs stay longer than others, but she remains mostly intact.

But mentally, she is worn. She is tired. She doesn’t want to hear about all the things that she is incapable of doing. She wants to be fixed. She wants to be free. But she is nailed to the wall as things crumble around her. Somehow, she has become the support beam for her world. She offers to take the agony, to take the stress, so her friends can be free. Her insides crack just to let others live.

She doesn’t know when the fractures will break her. Many are only hairline fissures, but others stretch as deep as the Grand Canyon. No one can try to dive in without being cut. She masks the torment with mediocre comedy. Maybe if she smiles enough—if she mirrors their emotions—she can hide her true feelings.

Whenever she’s cracked, she’s left on the floor. Pieces of her personality litter everywhere she goes. She tries to pick them up and force them back in. It never works. She just wants someone to help her pick up the pieces; she wants the help that she’s never received. She hopes that if she lets them see all her broken pieces and missing parts that they’ll try to help, but they never do. No one ever stays. No one ever picks up a broom and insists they get to work.

So she lowers herself to the ground and weeps. Her tears cover all the fallen parts of her. They carry the dust away. She’s losing herself. Her submission to emotions will never let her become whole again. 

The glass makes deep gashes as she picks herself up. Parts that she thought she wanted back give her more aching than they once did. Parts that she thought she lost long ago fill her hands. But does she want these broken pieces back? What if they contribute to her endless hurt?

But what if they don’t? Maybe her old discomfort will change her. Perhaps she will stop holding up the house as it crumbles around her. Her friends could take her from the avalanche before it begins. She doesn’t need to be a support beam. 

Alas, she is too stubborn. When broken, glass is even sharper. Her words sting when she wants them to soothe. She is a weapon that is unintentionally made for defense. But she wishes to be a mirror. She wants to be the small, fold-up mirror that a little girl looks into. She desires to be a gift. 

She wants to be put back together like a puzzle. She wants to be glued back together. She may be broken, but she’s still glass, and she knows she’d be the prettiest broken glass sculpture.