Glass Butterfly

Her delicate frame lay cold and white, at such a peaceful angle that she appeared to be sleeping.  Now that I’ve said that, you know she was actually dead, since that is the oldest phrase in the book for such a scene—but it couldn’t be avoided.  She really did look so peaceful, at long last.  
     Her childhood had been lonely and terrifying, filled with men who wanted things from her that should never be taken.  She never learned the right way for those things to go, but she did grow more and more beautiful as she drew closer to womanhood.  Before puberty was finished, or had passed completely from her system, she was pregnant—date rape, she said.  Her drinking and abuse of prescription drugs went unchecked, and somehow she had another baby, with a nice boy.  She was diagnosed as bi-polar, and had a problem with cutting—addictions came as easily to her as the wrong men.  Her beauty seemed to sharpen with each piece of her heart that was broken, and the art that she made, the songs that she sang, each echoed with the contrasting outer beauty and inner chaos.  She made all the wrong choices, by not making any.  She stumbled through her life, always looking for the next high, expecting that one of them—someday—would be the one she could stand on and use as leverage to get out of this life.  She didn’t stop forgiving the men who tore apart her spirit, she didn’t stop wishing that the next high would be the one with the power to liquefy the shreds of her self and bring them back to wholeness, she didn’t stop loving everyone with all the pieces of herself she still had.  It was as if she was the last of the fairy princesses—so much like a fairy did her tiny frame and fairness of skin and hair paint her to be—and there was a wicked witch who had cursed her, jealous of her talents, her heart, and her beauty.  Sometimes even she believed this was the case.  It made her smile to see it like that.  One day, her knight in shining armor came.  He was big and kind—he could protect her, and would.  She was safe, and had hope.  But he was not strong enough for two whole hearts, he needed her to stand alone, and be his partner, not his ward.  He left her, and she crumbled.  Spiraling downward so quickly it made her dizzy—or was that the alcohol?  Her world was jagged again, sharp like knives, dark like suffocation, empty like the night sky.  She tried to show him that she still needed him, but it was too late.  She tried too hard.  She needed him more than even she knew—and it was too late.