The Shattered Lens

Memories are like broken glass.

You look through them to see an image of what was, but the pieces are fractured, fragmented, and threatening to fall to pieces with the faintest gust of wind. In each little piece you see your reflection, each with a different angle and a different light. Through them all you see a complete picture, but through each jagged shard you see a scene, a snippet of events long past. Finite edges scraping against one another, bounding your frame of reference in a spiderweb of damages.

As time wears on, the chips and shards fall from the frame, each taking with it two more until all that's left are the pieces jutting out from the timeworn frame like bones from a compound wound. Signs that there was once a complete lens inside that has been torn apart by wind and water and time.

You can try to remove them, but with the slightest touch they will mar your skin and slice through the sinew and drip sticky red blood from the cut until each little mirror, each little window, is stained with your pain.

Best not to touch. Leave them alone, let time take its course, and let them fall from their frame and be forgotten upon the ground where you no longer see the world through their lens. Maybe they will be seen, but only if you go looking. Maybe they will be held, but not without a gasp of pain before they are once more relegated to the dirt.