Glass

The other night I stepped on glass. Walking down a busy West Village street, I saw the shards there, collected like shiny gems on a hot sidewalk. The moon floated quietly somewhere above dignified buildings, and occasionally a lazy, moist breeze came around a hidden corner to please the backs of our necks, to seduce the tender part of my shoulders. I lifted the hair from my temples and laughed at such a night as this. I felt full, anticipatory. A woman in a red dress walking with strength and confidence right through the shards of glass glittering on a pretty street on a hot, sultry night in summer. I had no sense of danger—the night was too perfect for that, too full of promise. And of course I misjudged, mis-stepped—and suddenly there was pain, and then blood from the tip of one newly painted toe…

Sit down, he says, taking my arm. But I don’t want to sit down tonight, don’t want to stop moving. I’m uncertain about where we are heading, but I want to keep going. I want to see this night through: I am curious, hopeful. Later, in a crowded brick room, the singer says from the stage, Hey, Red, you got the fire in you. And I forget until I look down that I’m wearing a red dress. Something that will come off later and take the fire with it, a heap on the floor, and me stretched across the bed in pain.

Glass is a lovely thing, full of contradictions—like me, like us. Smooth, sharp; reflective, translucent. It brings the new day inside, the morning sun radiating polished leaves just beyond the window; at night, glass hides the outdoors, reflecting the bedroom lamp and my obscured face back at me. There is glass everywhere in this lonely house. Sometimes I avoid the large glass mirror hanging on my bedroom wall, and sometimes I stand before it and lean in close.

Today the cut is healing as I sit with my sore foot propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. I have washed it, applied ointment, and will wait through the healing. Sometimes it stings more than others… Before me, my son sings flat and impassioned to the TV, the mic in one hand, rock star hopes in the other, and an animated band on the screen. He is surprised when I know the songs—oblivious to the fact that his mother has lived, has loved, in ways that he is unaware. You know this song? he says, looking back at me with a grin that makes the pain disappear. But only for a moment. And then it comes back, throbbing, insistent, saying, don’t forget about me…
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