Globes Within Globes

And her life was a collection of snow globes, some shattered, some shining, some stolen from souvenir shops and others gifted by gentle hands. Cheap plastic and expensive glass and everything in between cast translucent shadows on the walls around her and she felt like she finally understood.

I closed my eyes and unzipped the snow globe, removing it from its tan cocoon. The contents inside were jumbled and blurry and colorful like music notes floating in water. I knew what I had to do—not shake it, but peer up real close at it, and finally discern what was inside. I couldn’t avoid it anymore; the pain was too much to bear. I had to face it… I had to face him.

Within the glass shell, there were two figures walking along—a boy and a girl. The girl’s backpack hung loosely off of one shoulder, while the boy’s was tightened as far to his back as it would go. They walked down the cherry blossom-laden street, and though they weren’t hand in hand, they might as well have been.

“Do you ever think about blah blah blah blah?” the boy asked. The girl nodded and replied something incoherent back. It was hard to hear over the ebb and flow of the white noise. The human brain can be so loud, you know?

Inside this little snowglobe—this diorama of a yellow house on a hill with flowers raining down beneath it— she was safe. Maybe it was painfully fleeting, but she was safe. The words exchanged between her and the boy didn’t matter; she knew they were tinged with love. And she saw the boy’s soft brown hair and she felt his moss ball eyes directed at her and no, the love wasn’t romantic, but she was damn sure if there was anyone in the world whose soul could absorb into hers, it was his.

Such a pure, symbiotic, loving love, full of high highs and medium lows. Lows marked by middle school arguments on the bus that ended after a day or so. Lows where one saw the other crying in the hallway at school and decided they’d suffer together.

Lows where she thought of all the things they—he— hadn’t done, like playing their favorite video game together, or her checking out the TV show he loved so much. After they parted ways, it was like she suddenly remembered all that he was missing. Those were the real lows… the hard lows. The ones she nearly couldn’t bear.

He would’ve loved this show. I wish I could tell him about it. I wish...

And suddenly, the road covered in pink petals became a prison, because the girl stopped to admire the cherry blossom tree, but the boy kept shuffling, kicking up petals as he went.

“Where are you going?” she called, wringing her hands. She didn’t like the space that was growing between them. The air was getting thicker, lumpier, uglier.

“I have to go,” he apologized. His face was emotional and emotionless and dead and alive all at once.

“No,” she beckoned, “come back and look at the tree with me. Look at these petals; aren’t they pretty?”

“The petals are pretty, but not pretty enough. Every time I step on one it breaks and I destroy it.”

“But that’s just the way life is,” she protested, beginning to panic. She could feel the space growing.

He moved to the middle of the road. “Then maybe I can’t handle life at all,” he said, his face stony. “Maybe I just can’t do it anymore.”

“What’re you saying?” she yelled, trying to move from her assigned spot by the cherry tree. Her legs were glued down to the paper floor and everything swayed around her.

The school bus came out of nowhere, barreling down the street like a horizontal rocket. It plowed over him before she could scream, and he completely vanished, like a ghost. His body sank through the ground and the bus kept on going down the road, like nothing had happened. But something had happened.

Suddenly, she wasn’t stuck in place anymore. She flailed around and wept so hard that her face became drenched. Or was that the rain that had started overhead? Its grey streams soiled the flower petals and pushed them in clumps down the storm drain.

The house had never been yellow— more like a greyish egg yolk color, and she screamed and screamed. And when the screaming stopped at last and there was nothing left inside, the girl felt the familiar urge, the one that always filled the space when she couldn’t feel anything or felt too much.

The urge filled her up with black smoke and spilled out of every orifice, slithering through the air and turning everything dark. She leaked black; it was all she could see. Black blisters spread up her arms and across her chest and over her eyelids, and she was cold.

He told me he wouldn’t, she thought, for it hurt too much to say aloud.

He told me we would do everything together… and I told him everyday that he was going to grow so big… so why… why…

Her bag, having at some point been peeled from her back, was floating towards the storm drain. Despite her new freedom of movement, she watched it go. It belonged there, underneath the surface, in the endless corridor of broken dreams and broken promises.

And, as it turned out, so did she— for a time.

The neatly paved road split right down the middle like a piece of grey fabric being torn at a yellow seam. And as the girl plummeted into the darkness below, she reached her hand out, trying to steal a last glimpse of sunlight.

The abyss was so deep and so dark and she kept falling deeper and deeper. It started as air too brittle to breathe and soon became liquid too thick to move through, enveloping her and creeping into her lungs and out of her eyes. Still, through the black she could barely make out a spot of white, miles and miles up一 that was the sun.

She landed at the bottom and lay there on her knees, staring dejectedly forward. Sometimes her old, happy memories flashed in her mind. She remembered the cherry blossoms that day, and the darkness would shrink a little, moving her closer to the sun’s realm. She remembered his smile一 that stupid, goofy smile that lay at the bottom of the abyss with her.

But once she remembered all that was dark, the sun turned into a speck again, and she felt utterly alone.

Even though the boy had chosen to take himself here, he was nowhere to be found. He had left her, even though he knew she was prone to black-outs like this. He had known and he had stepped into the road anyway.

You were such a dear friend to me, she thought, but I hate you. You’re dead… to me…

A hand grew from the white spotty sun above and trailed its wispy blue arm down miles and miles to open its palm in front of her. She peered at it, confused.

“I’m right here,” a familiar voice said.

“Where?” she asked, but no sound came out. The darkness absorbed everything, yet somehow she got a reply.

“Here.” The hand motioned.

And suddenly, the dark, once so big and bristly, shrunk down. Or, rather, it shrunk up, and within a few seconds was on equal level with the sunny blue sky she had missed so damn much.

And there he was. Bathed in blue and white, an angel in real time. And then, as she got closer, he materialized as the echo of a human.

“Hello,” she whispered, her voice shaking. Tears coated her eyelashes and stung like glass.

“Hi,” he said back, reaching out a hand.

And suddenly it was almost all the same. She reached out both hands, uncertain but blissful, and held him so tight her bones ached. She felt the texture of his hair on her cheek; felt the detached warmth of his skin. She hugged him around the torso and planted her lips on the top of his head, peppering him with kisses that punctuated all of the questions.

Why?

What?

How?

Where?

… WHY?

She held him and it was so close to feeling real; she could practically feel him in her fingertips, and she slid down his leg and hugged it and tried to take him all in. But the pesky fact remained—

He was dead.

He’d never be alive again.

The boy hugged her back, his face pale and cherub-like. No tears glimmered in his eyes, and somehow she knew it was because he no longer had the ability to cry.

“I want you to do something for me,” he said.

“Okay. I will,” she choked out, clutching onto his sleeves.

“Breathe out all of that darkness you feel, and let me absorb it.” When she protested, he hushed her and added, “It’s alright; I can take it. Exhale that tar that has bogged you up for so long. Really cough it out. And as you pause, inhale Peace.”

He raised a finger and twirled it around in the cloudy air, stirring up a corkscrew of cerulean blue and lemon yellow light.

“That’s Peace?” she asked, surprised.

“It is.”

“Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?!” she demanded, suddenly overtaken with fury. It felt cold and hot all at once, like dry ice wrapped around her soul.

He raised his hand to silence her, and for some reason, she listened. Instead of prodding on, the girl looked at him for a few moments and then sharply inhaled as much as she could.

The effect was instant, and euphoric. Peace mixed with whatever that dark smog was, creating mottled smoke that trailed in and out of her mouth. She kept breathing in all that Peace and ridding herself of the gunk inside and the more she did it, the lighter she felt. Momentarily she wondered how she’d allowed herself to get that heavy, and she felt ashamed, but the boy said, “Don’t.”

Something began to happen as he breathed in her darkness, too. Rather than going inside of him, the smoke seemed to pass through his head, trickling out around his back. It was there that the change started happening一a substance once so dark and dismal crystalized into gold branches, sprouting into a tree that grew taller with every breath he took. She marveled at the tree, and thought to herself, It’s the tree of life. Ironic.

“Not as ironic as you might think,” he said.

“You need to stop doing that,” she said angrily. “It’s freaking me out.”

“Doing what?”

“Reading my mind.”

He shrugged, a smile playing at his lips. The tree grew taller, and taller. He looked up to inspect his work, but a shadow of dread passed over his face. She turned her head up to see what he was looking at.

A giant hand holding a giant razor blade crept up from the near horizon, moving until it was looming over the golden tree. Its wrinkly grey fingers were poised on the blade and she instantly knew what was about to happen, but reacted too late. The hand swiped the razor through the tree一 clean slice. The top of it slid off and toppled, its wondrous branches vanishing with a prickly poof.

And the girl plummeted into darkness again.

I knew it. I knew it. I lurched away from the glass, planting my feet on the ground at the last second so I don’t fall over the stool. The snowglobe sat cold and dead in my hands, like a jellyfish floating in the Arctic Circle.

Struggling to take in air, I rotated my shoulder back as far as I can and hurled it against the wall.

I wanted it to shatter into millions of tiny little pieces, pieces I’d step on later and probably bleed from. I wanted it to… hurt me. Because I deserved it.

“I deserve it,” I sobbed, cradling myself. “I deserve it. I deserve it. I did this. I killed him…”

Time passed. I cried harder and harder until my heart was twisted into knots. Then, I staggered to my feet and went to the door that took me out of the white room. My hands grappled at the knob; it wouldn't turn. I finally got it halfway open and slithered through. The frame groaned when I slammed it, so I slammed it again.

Never again, I vowed. Never again.

Of course, I went back the next day.

The next snowglobe was wrapped in green burlap. It was in worse shape than the last one was, yet more endearing. I didn't feel as scared looking at this one, even though I knew I’d see him again.

Deep breath. Now take a look.

The girl had somehow made it out of the darkness, but she wasn’t sure how or when. Well, out of the darkness wasn’t entirely accurate— she was still in a dark place, but now, she had company.

The girl was sprouting from mother earth, her spirit a mix of translucent blue and green. The heavens danced above her, and so did he.

He was spread out over the vast space, his face dark and speckled with stars and so beautiful. He was beaming, literally beaming一his smile lit up the sky. The girl realized something critical:

Maybe this was his home all along. Even when he was on Earth with me, he danced among the stars.

Suddenly, as quickly as she’d appeared there, they were transported some place else. The scene felt familiar, but it was autumn, not spring. They were kids standing at the bus stop, with her house looming nearby.

And, sliding her backpack off of her shoulders, she hugged him so tight and tried to remember the absolute blessing it was to love him.

It was only a flash in time, but it marked her forever. He had taken a pencil and engrained an initial into her heart that something as simple as life couldn’t take away.

They were back in space now, still embracing.

“Greta…” he whispered, “I’m sorry. The Earth was too warm for me. But space is too cold for you. You need to chase that flame, that flame inside of you. Don’t let it go out.”

He handed her something—a little black notebook—and said five words.

“I’m always here. Now write.”

“You’re always here, in the sky,” she repeated, and she cried, but felt relief.

Greta shrunk smaller and smaller, cutting through the atmosphere and into the Earth’s center, until she was at the core. Surrounded by red-orange magma, she was a little girl again. Perhaps she was even smaller than that—perhaps she was only an embryo. In the dim, warm light, forming a physical identity was impossible. Only clouds of soul remained.

For the first time, the guilt left her. How can you stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world? So much safety? After all, it had given her him. And maybe that was enough.

I put down the snowglobe gently, leaving it out of its case. It’s painful to look at, but glitters like gold. I withdraw the same black notebook he gave me from my pocket, and uncap my pen. The white room doesn’t feel so frightening anymore; I can think in here at last. I can say the words I’ve wanted to say all this time.

1/31/2021 1:24 a.m.

Dear Will,

This last month has been rough. I really miss you. Do you miss me, too?

Nevertheless, today was a really, really good day. Brigitte and I went to a Korean market in the city. It was so wonderful. The store was so big… and crowded. My anxiety over the hubbub outweighed my health anxiety, though, so it might’ve been good for me. I carry a blood oxygen measurer with me everywhere I go, now. It’s kind of sad. I check it once, then twice after a few minutes pass. I’m always relieved to find it’s all normal. Still, I’m terrified of illness—or, more accurately, death. It’s always been that way, but it’s gotten worse… because of your absence in my life. God, I miss you.

Last night I dreamt traffickers took over the neighborhood. A group of them came up to our front door waving knives, saying, “We’re only semi-violent.” I remember I was terrified.

I got into the honors college at the university! It’s definitely one of my favorites so far. If I went, I’d possibly room with Brigitte, which would be a dream.

~tired now (1:37), will continue later

6:32 p.m., next day

Hi, Will!

I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t have much time to write today. When I woke up, it was snowing—it’s supposed to continue til Tuesday! We have Monday off tomorrow because of the end of the semester. The snow is perfect—big, fluffy, weighted flakes that drift down and make the whole world quiet. I woke up this morning before anyone else lee and went outside, taking videos and letting the snow collect in my hair. Later, Dillon and I went sledding, and I even talked to the old man Mom says is mean. He wasn’t mean—not to us, anyway. He pointed us towards a good sledding hill, and we pet his dog.

I forgot how beautifully miraculous snow is. I love days like this, but I’d forgotten. It’s things like snow that make me so sad/mad at you. I want you to be able to feel a snowflake melt on your face… but you can’t. It breaks every part of me. I want to hug you, then shake you.

After sledding I made some of the ramen bowls I got from the market yesterday. Tonight, I’m making pork buns and shrimp for dinner. I’m very excited!

Mom and I got into a fight earlier because she reminded me to do my lifeguard application and I was super anxious about my health and I lashed out at her. No worries… I apologize and all is fine now. Still, I feel awful.

Anyway, as always, I miss you like hell. The pain hurts more than anything.

Tonight, after dinner, my family’s watching Murder on the Orient Express (‘74 version) with a fire in the fireplace. We may also play a detective game. I’m excited.

I love you, and sometimes, when the pain is too much to bear, I hate you.

-Greta

Before I knew it, the notebook was filled, save one page. I felt distressed, because I had nothing to pour my love into now. How would I talk to him?

Just as I began to spiral into despair, a voice told me to turn the page. I did— and found those two words from before.

Now Write.

So, I wrote. I wrote a lot, and wrote more and more until every black notebook on Earth was filled with my illegible handwriting. It didn’t mean anything, but it was sacred to me一like saying a prayer.

The little black books sat in piles in every corner of my room, toppling every once in a while and making me jump.

One day, I awoke. It was still winter, but the sun came through the windows like late May. It reminded me of when the police came to my house that day. And I grew so sad. I wanted to reach for a notebook, but there were none. Wait… that’s right, there were none. Even the ones in the corners had vanished. In their place were stacks and stacks of freshly printed dollar bills.

I couldn’t nearly count them all, but it had to be at least $20,000.

I walked over to them, standing in my nightshirt and staring in disbelief.

It’ll be okay in the end, the bills rustled, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

I knew that something had changed. The world glowed like May 30th, but without the bloodshed.

There was a sheet of paper nailed to the wall.

Use these to buy some light. Though it may seem dark up here, you have to pay for electricity, and the stars are completely free.

I took the bills and stuffed them in a chest and, still only in my nightshirt, slipped on old moccasins and dragged the crate down the stairs. It was snowing outside, and I remembered my first entry.

I realized I was in a snow globe, and accepted it.

The house looked sallow and stark against the white sky一neither ugly nor beautiful. I walked to the bottom of the hill, and rested for a moment. Then, hands plunging into the snow, I began to dig. My fingers may have bled a little, but it was alright. It was all alright.

There. The hole was big enough now to accommodate the chest, and I gingerly placed it inside. My foxhole of prosperity was complete.

Underneath the cherry blossom tree where it all began, I buried that chest. The branches were bare, but spring would come in time. And when it did, it would bring blossoms. I knew seeing them would make me cry. The pain would never really get easier. Sometimes, I would probably go back to the abyss.

But I loved him, and I accepted it.

Acceptance— the word rang in my ears like the orchestra one hears as they’re dying.

Underneath the blackened, barren tree at the foot of the hill, two snow globes merged into one.

“I love you,” I whispered, my tears watering the ground to prepare for spring.

The End