Glass by Ateret Haselkorn

I do not compare life to glass to be meek.

Glass may fracture or crack,

but I have seen windows stop time

for those who pause to gaze through.

Ocean waves devour trees, lift cars,

reduce buildings to outlines,

yet only transform glass into opaque pebbles.

Even then, its cryptic beauty

arrests people who stroll the shore,

and the few who resist surely notice the sand -

each grain a well-matched struggle between glass and time.

I do not compare life to glass to diminish.

Glass stems from an ancestry of forces

greater than the volume of a laboring mother’s cries

before a baby’s first.

Rounded outward,

it focuses light into flame.

Arched concave,

bodies bend to its curve,

distorted without touching.

And in between we are transformed

from glimmers to adults.

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Ateret Haselkorn writes fiction and poetry. She is the winner of 2014 Annual Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest (adult category). Her work has been published in CHEST Journal, Lamplit Underground, Sixfold, Corvus Review, Fiction on the Web, Anti-Heroin Chic, Literally Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Mused Literary Review, and Page & Spine. She maintains an author website at: https://aterethaselkorn.wixsite.com/author. Twitter: @HealthyHalo1.