Glass and Wind

by Ash Beige Baby

(This thought has been haunting me these days
But It's okay now, Thanks to my friend too.)

Somewhere out there, I sense a soft smirk, a careless posture
The kind that finds pain entertaining, as long as

it belongs to someone else.
I receive the signal. They thought cracks meant collapse.

Never have they ever asked what pressure does to stone?

Nature never shapes gently. Even mountains are not born, they are forced.
I believe every hard path my body walks now recently

is not punishment. It is calibration.
And I am not sorry that I am not breaking.
I'll probably just let the wind laugh,
right before it turns sand into glass.

I remember when I was nineteen.

Back then, a cowardly crowd, loud, small, trash senior envious
kept shouting my sister’s name through school hallways
for one unforgivable crime: being visible, being pretty, being admired.
Then the awful came not long after, a severe car crash.
Bones fractured, weeks in intensive care

A body of little 15 years old girl forced to relearn stillness.

When she returned to school, still dealing with her ownself

they shouted again.
This time claiming the accident was God's divine punishment.
I could not bear it, their act and words might think were not harmless,

only worse eroded her safety and dragged her mental ground.
So I staged up to what people called an Open Challenge
Public. Deliberate. Unignorable.
I humiliated them where silence and power

over their coward shitty mouth had protected them for too long.
I even was summoned to the headmaster’s office. HAHA
They sought backup from seniors in my batch too
But none came. I was relentless.
And I was a brilliant student, too. Thanks my brain.
a combination they couldn’t dismantle.

The result?
A public apology, a formal retraction of slander to my sister's name.
And then I never heard from them again. poof bye 

If you believe in the butterfly effect,
That day was my diploma celebration.
My Sister was proud and radiant, but couldn’t attend.
So at dawn, she went to a florist. We took a brief cute sister photoshoot.

Wrapped in happiness, careless with time.
Perhaps her subconscious rushed the road. Perhaps joy blurred caution.
And the crash followed. It wasn't God's Divine Punishment
It was a lesson, to be careful, to be disciplined,

to build a mind strong enough body and soul
for the world she was entering.

Now look at her. A successful young woman.

Great alma mater in her hands. Materially secure. Highly skilled.

A fierce project manager in a major influencer agency.

Even running her own high-rated makeup business.

She is ready.

Then what happened to the wind?
It lost its innocence.
It even  became the reason sand turned into glass.
The wind is not punished, but not celebrated either.
It becomes irrelevant.

The glass remains
beautiful, sharp, permanent,
consuming oxygen with its presence.

And the wind?
Just air that keeps moving,
carrying pollution,
forgotten.