A Girl Made of Glass

There was a girl, with crooked teeth and eyes too big and writing on her body. She would have been completely normal and perfectly happy had she not been made of glass.
Her family was so proud when she was born. "Other people may prance about with flesh and blood but not my child! My child is something special I can feel it!" Her father exclaimed to anyone who would listen.

From far and wide and there and here did people come. Long and short, black and white of all kinds did people come.
To see the child with transparent flesh and glistening skin, clinking about with her large eyes and crooked teeth.
Oh how they applauded her!
Oh how she laughed!

But soon enough the laughter was no more and the wonderous echo of a booming clap had dissipated.
For the girl began to grow.
And her family soon realised that she was made of glass!

What an impossible thing!

What a pathetic thing!

Who would accept her?

People were cruel. She would live forever in endless exile. What were they to do?
For their darling girl, with eyes too big and crooked teeth.
And so they told her to stop being so transparent.

And they tried to shroud her. Like a dirty secret. They began to tell her how wrong she was. So great was their fear. A wrong that must be righted. A freak.
So the girl stopped smiling, and she stopped clinking, and she stopped thinking, and she stopped feeling.
Slowly becoming as breakable as the glass she was made of.

Years passed. She watched her sisters grow, as flesh and blood. She caught her fathers pride at Meg's good grades, and Cassie's good looks. Caught it in her fist like a hummingbird stuggling for release, but it was never to be hers. What was to be hers?

The hard unforgiving glint of distaste in his eyes when his gaze strayed to her?
The awkward shuffling of her friends when they saw her approaching?
The crevices scratched into her heart that no one noticed?

Slowly, oh so slowly she incased herself in iron. To hide the chips in her skin and the writing on her arms. All the words they never took the time to hear. Maybe they would read them on her arm one day and everything would get better. Sometimes she found nothing more tragic than hope.
She crawled into a corner and let herself be swept away by the written word.
Yes, books and parchment and ink not blue enough became her passion.

And her refuge. And her dirty secret. Reading about desperate sorrows she could not fathom.
There was a girl with crooked teeth, and eyes too large and writing on her body who was made of glass.

Who slipped away,  escaping into paracostic whimsy.

Her sillage lingers in the breeze rushing through a windchime, in eyes that see things much too far and in thoughts that sometimes wander off the edge of the world.