SHATTERING SLOWLY Anaje Austin A bond that begins as friendship Until matured into a very different sort Of love. It would be like the seasons Of spring and summer, blossoming, blooming. Growing Warmer and brighter, our world seen through rose-colored glass. How vivid, how burning, so unexplainably sweet are these matters of the heart. The fire has cooled some, the love holding steadfast in my heart, But yours? I wonder sometimes if you miss our friendship, As I do, and the ease with which we once loved. Now, it is fragile at times, like glass, That makes up precious vases and trinkets, the sort That sits precariously, cracks and fissures growing As it grows more fragile in the frozen seasons. Our love is like the coldest of winter seasons, Stiff, unyielding, ice to the touch, as icicles like glass. Longer and longer, colder and colder, sharper and sharper, they are always growing. As the trees lose their color, becoming barren and gnarled, with emptiness I’ve found friendship. Loneliness, uncertainty, silence and solitude are companions of a newer, more lingering sort, As they war furiously, torment endlessly, the dying embers of hope in this winter of my heart It cuts into my hand, splinters my soul, litters the floor, this shattered glass Of what was once a symbol of our love. Seasons Don’t change so suddenly. Yet now, there is a different sort Of spring in your eyes, but it doesn’t warm—it chills— my heart Because I know—as certainly as I once knew your friendship— That it is for another that the warmth and life in your eyes—that the pain in mine—is growing The distance is growing To worlds apart, as I try to see into your soul through this wall of ice like glass. Only I can’t see you, because the glass is warped and uneven, damaged and broken. Friendship Cannot thrive here, in this winter of mine, while you are in seasons Of life and love, again. Your smile at her does not thaw—it burns— my heart. My wretched soul should know damnation, but this hell is of an unknown sort. I was never of the replaceable stock; our love never the sort To be stifled, choked, and felled by weeds growing In our midst. Our love was a rose, perfumed and beautiful, like the young girl whose heart You now hold—or is it your heart she holds? I wonder if she knows you are like glass In your cool, hard way. Will you treat her like fragile glass, until she chills and breaks in the seasons Harsher and colder? When she shatters, will you look upon her and say, “I’ll always value our friendship?” Of a parasitic sort is your affection; a poisonous thing, your friendship. The damage, the attack, growing within your loving victim, through every season’s Turn. You’ll steal the life’s blood from her heart, as you did mine, until empty and hollow, You’ll throw her aside Stepping around her splintered remains Like shards of glass.
Art by Vivian Tran
FEATURES ADS | ISSUE 2 9