Balsa, paper, glass
In fragments on the rug lay brittle pieces of coloured wood,a fret-sawed frame for a circle of glass. Stencilled onto the back was a picture of a Grecian vase in yellows, green and red. The mirror itself was intact, slightly fly-blown, slightly unsilvered.
Only the wood had not survived the fall. Cheap wood, expensive padding. Four small sheets of cream vellum, corners turned down, sixteen stepped triangles, a fortune-telling game.
Open the corners slowly, one by one.
No future was waiting under the folded corners of this soft octagon but the four sheets could be prised apart. Tiny precise grey pencil with open-ended syntax:
"When you break this intentionally fragile mirror"
"you will know"
"how much you are loved"
On the fourth sheet an initial and date from before the war.
The girl took the pieces all in her hands and carried them to her mother, who took them and turned them over, slowly, one by one, laying them out like a game of patience.
Balsa, paper, glass.
"We will glue it back together," she said.
"We need never know."
1 comment:
very beautiful, and shaped, and moving!
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