The Glass Wall

There’s a boy standing in front of me, and the only thing stopping me from running my fingers over his soft cheek is the glass wall between us. Barely centimetres thick, yet I cannot hear him speak as his lips move, nor feel the warmth of his fingers as he presses them to where my face should be. It’s a barrier we cannot see, and it’s all that is keeping us apart.

I know he sees the tears that run silently down my face. He knows the pain it causes every time my heart beats without his there to make it stronger, because he feels it too. He is my sky and I am his moonlight, and together we are the night.

Or we should be. I know his face; I see it every night, and I long for it. The specifics of his looks have never been known to me, but now I have found him and he sees me as surely as I see him. He knows who I am, who I can be. How much he loves me, even though I have no idea what his name could or might be. I don’t know anything about him, except that I am his, and he is mine. It’s all we need.

But that glass wall divides us, hides us as effectively as clouds amongst a storm. I am nothing without him, and he floats aimlessly without me.

His eyes have begun to look elsewhere. He is trying to find another way to me, around the glass. But I know there is only one way to reach him, and that is to break the obstruction. Shatter it into a million tiny pieces so small that they shimmer like diamonds even as they draw blood.

But I couldn’t use my bare hands to smash it. Of course not; plunging my bare fist into the fragile cage around me would destroy my world, wouldn’t it? Everything I ever knew, all that was once familiar… Gone, stolen away by one rash decision, never to be repaired or replaced, only mourned.

But there is nothing else I can do. Already I can see he is starting to drift, to lose focus so much that he can’t recall why he is staying in the first place. His heart is beginning to lose time with mine, no longer one rhythm, but nearly two once again.

I’ll draw my breath. I’ll pull my arm back.

I’ll break this wall.

It only takes a split second, but as my fist flies towards the glass, I realise that he doesn’t understand what I’m doing. How can he not see that the only way for us to be truly together, truly happy, is for this wall to break?
I hope he sees, once I am done.

His eyes widen, his lips part and his body betrays his shock. Suddenly sound rushes to overwhelm me, most of all the thunder of destruction, yet as I watch him, it all melts away into nothing but the sound of his heart and his breath. He steps closer, tentative, and I know he is unsure about whether I am real. I smile; just a small curve of lips, but it is enough. He understands.

His eyes drop, and his hands shake as he reaches to my bleeding fist. Tiny flecks of glass are embedded within my flesh, and they catch the light deviously, as if trying to dig themselves deeper into me. One by one, he picks the tiny fragments out, kissing away the blood and cleaning the wound. It will scar, but we both know that that was the price for our freedom. One that I was willing to pay.

His arms wrap around me, so tight I can barely breathe, but I don’t care. Now that he has me, he will never let me go. Our hearts beat in unison once again, stronger now than ever before. The night is complete. My love, my life, is restored. Renewed. Complete.

Every now and again I recall my cage, and the courage it took to free myself from it. The risk I took by shattering the glass wall. Any tiny piece of the wreckage could have done damage to him, to me. I still wear the scars on my hand and wrist, and they remind me that the prize must be worth the fight.

And it was, I think, as I smile and lean into him.
It was.