Glass Slipping Through Fingers, by Sarah Clayville

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo (UK). Contemporary.

Glass Slipping Through Fingers

Heat sand enough, burn and char it like scorched earth
and it will melt and ooze. Kiss and slip into a new form

Where once its home was an hourglass, slowly
ticking away the minutes, a processional. Grain by grain.

But now we’re both blistering together in our own
personal supernova, forced to forgive time and instead gaze

Upon one another’s reflections. Where you were onyx,
you’ve now become supple and soft. Where I was fickle, I’ve now

Become stone. Where we grew and waned together,
there is a chasm. And the only way to bridge the gap

Is to break the glass.
​
Sarah Clayville

Sarah Clayville: "My work has appeared in journals such as The Threepenny Review, StoryChord, 1:1000, and others. I am a high school English teacher and freelance editor for several online journals."

This poem was inspired, "by a series of photographs documenting disturbed graves where bones weren't taken but rather scattered in an almost beautiful fashion. I found them in a set of antique National Geographic magazines as I was cleaning an archive." The original photos were by Gregory Jennings in "Buried Beneath Time," October 1952. The photo shown here is a phenomenal photograph by Clem Onojeghuo, but it is not the original source of inspiration.