For a minute there, I was gone. I was me just seconds before and all of a sudden I was that other me, that younger me, that faraway me - the torn and broken me, the one who would have given anything to mend the pieces of shattered glass.

Except that somehow, those specific pieces, your pieces, they were those I wondered the least about. You, I had simply discarded. Because you were the one who'd smashed up the glass, and although I wished with all my might I could get passed it, I could call you up, I could summon up enough strength to forgive you - I just didn't have it in me.

Maybe, given enough time, I would have found a way. But time was already running out when you burned us up, and I had so much healing to do already before I even got to you.

So today I heard your words. I couldn't at the time because for months, my ears were buzzing with the chatter inside my head - inside my heart.

I realized, your ears were buzzing, too. And you probably meant everything you said, no matter how contradictory it might have been, or seemed.

And for a minute there, I held on to your words. I let them in. And I grieved. I even wondered if I still had that shattered glass, and could I maybe put the pieces together again?

For a while, after my time was up, I fantasized you would come after me. I didn't even know if I wanted you to, but I wondered what I would do if you did. I couldn't come up with an answer; I might have if I had toyed around with the idea long enough, but you were salt being rubbed in my wounds, and I had to set you aside. Because I needed to keep going forward.

You never came after me anyway. I didn't expect you to. And it's probably a good thing, because, for so long, my ears kept buzzing, my head spinning. For so long, there just was no other way, and I couldn't have made anything worthwhile out of any leap on your part.

It was just a minute, and I was back. Coming to the same conclusion. The problem was not so much the broken glass as it was the aftermath. That aftermath is what I can't seem to grasp. Because whenever I think of it, still, something in my head goes I can't believe that's how it went down.

Maybe today if you turned up, I'd give you a try. Just in case.

But you won't.