Dear Pneuma,

Glass fills my thoughts this week.  Glass is hard, smooth, invisible when clean, and cuts viciously when broken.  Birds break their necks on glass panes, thinking they are spaces through which to fly, and glass allows us to see and be seen without having to trust.  I think about an aquarium that houses a giant spider, a test tube that houses a poisonous gas, a prison visitor center that allows voice contact but prohibits touch.

Glass allows me to see a view outside a flying airplane from within the airplane, without discernible distortion.  Glass distorts light and allows me to read words that my eye can no longer bring into focus.  Painted glass colors a view and frosted glass inhibits a view.  Molten glass flows quickly, cooled glass flows slowly, time runs inexorably through glass.

I take glass for granted.  I forget to look for it.  Like a wasp in the house, I get fooled into believing there is nothing between me and the light that calls.  I look down, and I can see where I have been.  I look up, and I can see where I am going.  I see people behind me.  I see people ahead of me.  I don't see the glass.  They don't see the glass.  

I forget I am standing on a barrier.  I forget I cut myself breaking the barrier to get here.  I forget there is a barrier above me, that I stand in a glass box, separated.  I reach out to touch the spider;  it tries to touch me, but we meet at the glass, each prisoned in our own environment, only knowing that we long to feel one another, taste one another, know one another, unable, truly, to see what it is that stands between us.

Love Always,

Cobalt Dreams