Broken Glass

It happened yesterday, when I was taking glasses and dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them back in the cupboard, and all of a sudden CRACK! Bits and shards broke off from the top of a glass. I'd hit the glass against the edge of a shelf in the cupboard. Not that hard, but sometimes all you have to do is hit it just the wrong way. That was it for the glass. I'm still finding glittering bits on the kitchen counter this morning.

A tall, clear glass, with painted stripes and squiggles running around it, red and blue and yellow and light green. The kind of glass you use for milk or orange juice at breakfast in the morning. I can't remember the last time I broke a glass. It annoys me.

Yet at the same time it also saddens me. That glass was one of four. I remember when I bought those glasses, in a huge cavernous liquidator's outlet down in Durham, North Carolina, back around 1990. I was a student at Duke, living under the poverty of student life, and I needed some glasses. I've used those glasses for years, down South, a couple of different places I lived in Illinois, and now these past going on eight years here in Iowa.

Broken glass. Sounds silly to say I miss a glass. But I do.