[open] i could open the door and breathe in the dust

[Hourglass]

— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side
just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;

She cannot quite keep the unease that stirs in her chest from reflecting back in her lilac eyes when he voices his request. “If you can’t do it, what makes you think I can do it? Look at you, and look at me,” she says the last word with an air of exasperation, tilting her head in a gesture towards the smooth, chestnut-red glass of her body. While for the most part she has made it through the world largely unscathed, she is not entirely unmarred—a chip here, a scratch in the glass there. When she was younger she had ignored all of her mother’s warnings and pleas to be more careful, and her lack of caution showed. It’s only recently that she began to behave like the breakable thing she realizes she is.

But she doesn’t want to be fragile; she wants to be able to throw herself headlong into the nothing and see what happens, she wants to have the privilege of recklessly satisfying both their curiosities without wondering if she will only shatter against it.

So instead she inhales a steadying breath, looking in concentration across the river for a long moment, and then back to him. “So how do you propose I do it? Just…walk across? Get a running start and jump?” Her heart gives a thrilled little skip at the idea of this experiment. What will she find on the other side? What if the nothing swallows her up and she can’t find her way back? What if she doesn’t want to?

hourglass

— with this love like a hole,
swallow my soul —