By Jill Szoo Wilson
She wanders through the glass garden,
its delicate beauty responding, finger to mirrored finger’s touch.
Strange, crystalline flowers stretch toward the light,
their petals refracting into soft spectrums
that dance along smooth pathways.
Silence presses in, heavy and expectant,
as if the air itself holds its breath.
At the garden’s center, he waits. He always does.
Shadows cling to him, his form barely tethered to solidity,
a presence stitched together by longing and careful restraint.
A faint smile flickers, never quite full enough to trust,
yet just enough to draw her closer.
“You belong here,” he murmurs,
his voice gliding through the stillness
like wind through hollow reeds in minor tones.
She hesitates.
Once, she believed him.
The garden felt like a sanctuary then,
each shimmering petal a promise,
each whispered word an anchor.
He held her attention gently,
but never her truths.
Now, something has shifted.
A fissure in the glass,
a hairline chime so subtle she almost doubts it.
Light catches differently, harsh, revealing.
What once dazzled now glares too bright, too sharp.
She touches a flower, glass petals cold and rigid.
A faint metallic sigh lifts from the bloom, out of tune with everything lovely.
Smooth. Perfect. Unchanging.
It does not bend or breathe.
It is made to be admired,
not to grow.
A crack splinters outward from her fingertip.
His expression stutters.
His outline wavers,
a reflection fractured,
more silhouette than man.
“Stay,” he says, voice tightening.
“Stay as long as you like.”
But she sees the architecture now,
paths that always loop back to him,
walls that glitter like freedom
while holding her in place.
He offers comfort without courage,
intimacy without vulnerability,
presence without entrance.
He keeps her not with chains,
but with the fear
that beyond these fragile walls
nothing will care for her as he once did.
The glass beneath her feet trembles.
The garden shudders.
Light bursts into chaos,
not radiant but blinding.
Stepping stones split apart.
The sharp sound of rupture
erases memory faster than she can cling to it.
He reaches for her
but his hand halts midair.
He can summon, but not hold.
He exists only within the shimmer,
never in the world where things grow.
“You beckon,” she says,
“yet drift backward from the place you call me to.”
She inhales.
A quiet instinct rises,
not a thought, not a plan,
just the first pulse of something living.
Without another glance,
she moves beyond,
through ruin and release.
Beyond the garden,
the world stretches wild and untamed.
Sifted earth rises to meet her feet,
unsteady but real.
Wind tangles through her hair.
The scent of something alive,
dirt, leaves, wildflowers,
fills her lungs.
Behind her,
a world of tinkling glass
cascades and shatters,
a thousand tiny bells
collapsing at once.
Sharp edges melt into curves.
Memories smolder into ash.
A single birdcall,
bright and unfamiliar,
breaks open the quiet.
She pauses.
Listening.
Unsure.
The wild ahead
waits without promise
and without fear.
Necessary Whispers 