Glass Girl

Johnathan picked up the pieces of glass off the floor one by one, looking around to see what might have broken. The flower vase filled with blood red roses was still on the counter, and the plates were all neatly stacked inside the cupboard on the wall, and there was no sign of where anything had been thrown. Yet, the floor was littered with glass pieces as cold as ice.

"John what are you doing? Why is there glass all over the floor?" Dana slowly walked into the kitchen next to where Johnathan was standing, careful not to cut her bare feet on the broken glass. Her satin red pajama pants were low on her hips, her white tank top barely reached her belly button, and she was slightly shivering from the cold bouncing off the glass into the once-warm air.

"I'm picking up the glass...I have no idea where it came from, I just found it laying all over the place when I came in here to get your tea." Johnathan lifted Dana off the floor and set her carefully on the counter top, looking into her eyes as he did so. "I don't want you cutting your feet, who knows where this glass came from."

"It's so cold...how can glass possibly be that cold?" Dana reached out her hand and lightly touched a shard of glass, and quickly pulled her hand back as blood began to spill from her finger. "It's so cold...so sharp....What could it have come from?" Johnathan quickly grabbed a bandaid out of the box in one of the cabinets and put it around her finger, gently leaning down to kiss it when he was done.

"I don't know where it could have come from...Don't touch it again...I don't want you hurt anymore." He wrapped his black shirt around him tightly and quickly buttoned it up to the collar, zipping up his jeans while he was at it. "Dana honey where are those garden gloves we bought for you to trim the roses?"

"In the living room I think." Johnathan nodded his head and walked slowly and carefully into the living room, grabbing the garden gloves off the coffee table in front of the couch. He slipped them onto his hands, getting used to the feel of the thick brown rubber, and walked back into the kitchen. Dana was slowly swinging her legs back and forth with her hands on both sides of her grasping the edge of the counter. Her eyes suddenly widened in surprise and horror as the pieces of glass began to move.

"Johnathan...The pieces are moving..." Johnathan stopped dead in his tracks and walked carefully from where he was standing against the counter that surrounded the kitchen, and stopped to stand near where Dana was sitting on the counter. The small shards of glass slowly moved around on the cream colored carpet, until finally they stopped moving around, and Dana and Johnathan could finally read what it said. Johnathan and Dana slowly read it outloud together.

"These shards of glass used to belong to me,

They held a special place deep inside.

For you see, these icy pieces,

Were my heart on the outside.

One day a boy melted it to a fleshy red,

And for weeks I was happy and alive.

Then suddenly things took a horrible turn,

And my heart took a freezing dive.

It turned to ice as I turned to stone,

And my body slowly melted away.

Now my heart comes to visit lucky couples,

Whose love will forever stay.

Promise not to hurt each other,

And put my heart back together once more.

For I am just a petty reminder,

Of what I lost before.

~Glass Girl

"Wow...she must have really loved him..He hurt her and she turned to stone...I remember the story of the boy that was taken by the ice queen and had his heart turned to ice...Wait...isn't there a statue of a girl in the garden?" Dana looked up from the glass into Johnathan's eyes.

"Yes...she came with the house." Dana hopped off the counter onto the floor, and started picking up the pieces of glass and arranging them so that they fit together. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? She asked us to put her heart back together...thats what I'm going to do." Dana knelt down on the floor and slowly continued arranging the pieces until Johnathan sat down on the floor beside her and started to help.

"You're right...she deserves to have her heart back." Dana smiled at him and continued to move the pieces around and watching them lock into place. Finally over the next half hour they got all of the pieces into the correct spots, and stopped to look at the heart on the floor.

"We should take it to the girl in the garden..." Johnathan nodded his head and watched as Dana carefully picked up the glass heart and cradled it in her cupped hands. Dana stood up and held the heart close to her chest, ignoring the cold that was nipping dangerously at the bones in her hands. Johnathan stood up and followed Dana as she walked out of the kitchen door outside into the garden in the back.

"There she is..." Johnathan looked up at the girl that was in the garden. She was wearing a simple skirt and blouse, but she seemed to have been crying as she was sculpted. Small droplets of water were dropping off the statue from the girl's eyes, and hitting the flowers below with a soft thump. Johnathan wrapped his arm around Dana's waist as she held her hands out and slowly pressed the icy cold glass to where the girl's heart would have been. Water the color of blood began to drip from Dana's outstretched hands, but she kept pressing. Finally the heart disappeared into the statue, and Johnathan and Dana stepped back out of the way to look at the girl.

The statue was slowly changing from a pale grey to having a light pink blouse and a purple skirt, and water stopped dripping from her eyes. The umbrella that had been perched in her hand was slowly lowered to the ground so that the tip was touching the soft spring grass, and the now-real girl looked at Dana and Johnathan.

"Thank you." She whispered the words as though her voice were the wind quickly passing to their ears and leaving. She gave them a quick smile and slowly vanished from where she had been standing. Dana looked down at the palms of her hands where she had pushed the heart into the statue, and noticed a pale blue heart in each hand, almost as if they were tattooed there. Johnathan pulled Dana close to him and she leaned her head on his shoulder, and looked at the spot where the girl had been.

In place of the previous statue was now a small girl holding a heart made of glass. She was staring up into Dana's eyes and there was a smile on her face. Johnathan hugged Dana tightly as she whispered quietly to the wind.

"Glass girl, wherever you are....You're welcome."