The Glass

Behind a glass, he wrote her songs. She didn’t understand them, but they were beautiful, with dissonant chords that chilled her whenever she would play them on the piano.1

The glass was tinted in a way that she could not see him, but he could see everything. She talked and sometimes cried to her reflection, but he did not even let her hear his voice. She knew that his wordless songs revealed more about him than her own face revealed about herself, if only she could understand. She was frustrated, and often it showed, but he would never explain.2

She told him about her home, how she missed the sun and the pebbles and the ice cream with friends on Saturdays. Her life was simple before she moved here, before she met Jacob Arman. She rarely spoke of Jacob, and when she started to, she was unable to continue. The glass was always silent, but she could feel something radiating from it. She knew that he was listening.3

When November came, she became more frustrated than ever. It was getting colder, and she ached to see the person behind the glass. Ideas and theories sprang from her mind. For all she knew he could be a legend writer whom everyone assumed was no longer living, or a genius child unable to express himself in any other way.4

“I want to see you to prove to myself that you’re real, and that I’m not in love with a figment of my imagination.”5

As soon as she saw the corner of the paper appear from the crack, she snatched it out feverishly. "You’re in love with a figment of your imagination. Save your last shred of sanity, and don’t come back tomorrow."6

She came back tomorrow and the days following. Sometimes, he refused to write to her, but she talked to the glass anyway, about the snow, about her family and how they would be hanging up decorations during this time of year.7

On Christmas Eve, she said to him, “I am not going to leave until you reveal yourself to me. It’s not fair, I've told you everything but I don’t know anything.”8

"Please don’t do this," he wrote.9

“Do you expect me to spend the rest of my life talking to my own reflection on a window? They’ll find me and send me off to an asylum.”10

She laid her head against the glass and closed her eyes, then opened them and watched vapor form on the glass from her breath and disappear. It was dark now, the snow on the ground glowed against the black sky.11

“Wait here,” whispered the glass, “I’m coming.”12

When she heard the footsteps in the snow, she ran. She did not know what propelled her to do so, but she knew that she no longer wanted to meet the person behind the glass.13

Years later, she remembered almost nothing about it. The songs had all been destroyed, and without them, she doubted whether they were ever written.14

She visited the glass one day and discovered that it belonged to a mental asylum. She asked them whether they knew of an artist who would write brilliant songs behind a tinted glass.15

"We did," they told her. "She would walk outside at night and talk to her reflection on a window. She would fall asleep beside it and we would carry her back to her room. One night when we went out to get her, she ran away. That was the last we'd seen of her."16

"Why was she like that?" she asked.17

They shook their heads. "She never told us. The only one she could talk to was her reflection on the window, poor thing. Whatever happened, it must have been terrible."18

"I know what happened." And when they looked at her, shocked, she said, "I knew that girl."