Silver Baubles

The little girl loved the glass baubles

loved their shiny surfaces

that could catch the light

and shine it back

loved the fragility that

she was not allowed to touch.

The oldest ones were especially fragile

like old people, she thought, so easily broken.

They had been bought by her grandmother,

her old dead grandmother,

so old she had never known her.

Their colours had faded,

it happens with time

she was told.

The glossy paint had cracked and peeled away,

it happens with time,

the heat and dryness does it

like wrinkles and flaking skin

even here where cold and damp prevails,

yes, it happens with time,

even here. 

But the baubles were still shiny

gleaming silver 

underneath underneath their fading colours.

The old people she knew weren’t glossy

just wrinkled, dry and fragile.

She wondered when they would become silver.

She knew that just a touch could break a bauble

shatter them 

so they no longer existed

just like her grandmother

and the other dead people.

She wondered if they became silver,

perhaps it was after they died.

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