Shards

One day, he picked up a shard of glass.

In the street. It wasn’t anything special

but it had a nice sheen in the sun.

It was flat, for the most part

glittered like the lake in summer.

It brightened his day.

He wasn’t doing too well at school.

Hank and his clique had stolen his lunch.

Again. Stepped on his shoes. Again.

Miss Atterby said he was slow,

he overheard her at parents’ evening.

Said he would struggle his whole life.

Later that night he heard his dad say

“What we going to do with him?”

His mom didn’t say a word.

Life was like that. 

His dad drank and shouted and punched.

His mom didn’t speak, cried and made dinner.

He liked to watch the grass grow

and the sun make shadows

and sometimes glimmer on raindrops.

He wasn’t too bothered with others,

except when they stole his lunch.

He liked playing with his shard of glass.

Sunrays made it gleam real pretty

especially near the edges.

He liked it so much that he kept it in his bedroom.

Never brought it to school.

He didn’t want Hank to lay his filthy paws on it.

But he missed it every minute.

He rushed home as soon as the bell rang.

Sighed with relief unhiding the shard.

As even on rainy days it would sparkle.

One day he found another shard.

This time near the grocer’s.

When he picked it up the fat man

who always winked at his mom 

with saliva at the corner of his mouth

said “You going to cut yourself”.

He knew adults were always right,

like the time he was told not to climb the tree

in the supermarket parking lot.

He fell and broke his collarbone.

That day he thought this was death.

And then his dad beat him more,

and he knew death was worse

than breaking his collarbone.

This was just pain. A lot of it.

So he pocketed the shard of glass

making sure he didn’t cut himself.

At home he cleaned it in the bathroom sink

with some soap. Delicately. Delicately.

The light coming through the oval window

made it shine so bright he closed his eyes.

He could still see the shard shimmer.

Then he put it in the box, with the other.

He played with one at a time only

because he didn’t want to cut himself

like the fat greengrocer has said he would.

It was like playing with the surface of the lake

every glint weaving around his fingers.

But one day he tried playing with both

and he saw they kind of fitted together.

They fitted so well he couldn’t pull them apart.

He couldn’t even see the line between them.

It was easier this way to play with them,

he thought, so he left it at that.

The glisters like liquid light 

bright, bright

the only flicker in his life.

Life had no flicker for him, though:

school, no school, lunch, no lunch

dad drunk, mom crying

him crying because people were mean

torn jeans, getting beat, getting more beat,

and the fat one smiling always.

Until he found another shard of glass.

And another. And another. And another.

Over the month he pieced enough

to make something

he didn’t know what it looked like

but it was like a big hollow box

with one large hole and three smaller ones

and it spangled and glimmered

like a puddle of rain with petrol in it

in the sun so unbearably beautiful.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

The box was getting bigger and bigger

with things like branches popping out

and it grew bigger and bigger and prettier

so he hid it in his cupboard instead.

One day, Hank got him good though.

His clique had cornered him near the bins,

he couldn’t run any longer.

They beat him and beat him and beat him

and a rage in his heart began to grow

his mouth tasted like metal and he smelt it too.

He thought he could engulf the world in fire.

When he spat his blood on the ground

he saw swirls of colours streaking across

like mad butterflies, purple and blue and green.

His dad made fun of him when he came home

black and blue and his heart beating in his face

the rage gripped his stomach and twisted

he got so mad that he took a map of the city

in the chest of drawers in the corridor

marked all the spots where he had found a shard

so he knew where to look for new ones.

It took him a week to find as many pieces as he could.

It took another week to assemble them all together

connecting holes with holes

making a structure which eventually

looked like a costume made of glistening water

When he was done the glass

all shimmery and smooth

was flexible like his clothes

with no seam or holes but somehow

he knew he could put it on

his face still contused hurt him when he smiled

as the glass costume fitted him like a glove

he became so sheeny that people winced

and looked away, hand spread before their eyes

the sun turned him into crystal

clouds in a grey haze

on rainy days he would be imperceptible

and Hank wouldn’t come near him

and Miss Atterby stopped saying he was slow

his dad shrugged and watched the match on the telly

his mom sort of looked and didn’t look

her eyes in the distance and smiled

One day he decided to go to the lake

and if the people picnicking there had looked

they would only have seen the surface

go crazily on fire, spangling like a night sky

like a shower of meteors glitzing the blue air

like a thousand suns firing up at once

like a million dragonflies’ wings flapping

as if all light and no light in a blend

Everything within a fraction of a second.

The surface of the lake, after the explosion, was undisturbed.