Broken Frames, Broken Stories

Maybe if I stay in bed long enough, my eyes will finally give in, she thinks. She longs for a lullaby, anything that could her fatigue defy.

Waiting to catch a glimpse of her long-forgotten friend, her gaze wanders to the window sill. Christmas lights from last year, now a tangled mess, lay covered in a mass of dead flowers. She makes a prayer for them to somehow grow. But then she thinks otherwise. There is a peace, she thinks, in death, in sleep. There is peace in letting go.

Her thoughts grow heavier, her eyelids, never. Patiently she awaits slumber. She awaits an acquaintance that had long since eluded her being. Her eyes are tired. Her soul, withered. But not weary enough to deserve some rest? She curses providence.

Her eyes drag onto the broken frame on the side table, and then they travel to the shards of glass on the floor. The third time today she hurt herself on the glass. Tracing the crimson path, her eyes land on her feet. A sharp pain she feels for a second. She remembers mother’s words. Tell me where it hurts, I’ll make it better. Everywhere, she whispers, everywhere, amma.

The digital clock next to the frame reads 2:11 a.m. Sleep still refuses to accept her hand of friendship. Back to the empty frame, her eyes travel. 

A broken frame.

She lifts her frail hands as if to hold on to something. They fall back down beside her broken body. My broken frame, she laughs. 

For months she would reach for whatever would fill the gaps. She would rake and maul at the emptiness, the void. But no more did the space between the cracked glass disturb her. It no more sought to make its nagging presence known to her.

Sleep, come to me, she begs. She craves this drug that everybody, but her, seem to so easily receive. Take me somewhere unknown to reality. Take me somewhere it cannot ever touch me. Let me not bother waking up. Just let me be, her body cries. Pressed against the satin sheets of her empty bed, she continues to hopelessly tend to her starving head. Gift me only a few moments of drowsiness, and I’ll adorn my rousing mind with broken images of a home away from home. Please, she begs, please. She waits in silence. She stares into nothingness.

Head propped up against a wall of endless thoughts, at the clock she looks again. 6:32 a.m. 

I have got my feet enough cuts to last a week, she thinks. It’s time I clear the glass. 

This time, her feet carefully avoid the rubble.