A Glass Sky

 A woman sat on the steps outside her home, broken. She looked up at the stars. It was the best time—the dead cold of a winter's night—when the world’s upper layers turned to glass, and through it one could see every star that ever was.

    She started to count them, each shining dot of light, as though it were a lifeline. And so it was. The infinity of the stars meant, to her, an infinite possibility of life, and if she could never count them, then she would remain herself.

    One, two, she began….

    A thousand and fifty-three…

    She was frigid then, her nose so cold it might not have been there.

    A thousand, eight hundred and two…

    Three thousand two hundred and thirteen…. She couldn’t count anymore. It was then that relief came, in a sigh from a breath that ran through her like hot wine.

    The stars weren’t going anywhere.

    And neither was she.

    Not yet.

    For the world seemed full of possibility again.

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