A glitter martini after midnight

Katsushika, Tokyo, Japan (2025)

just one…

something I could hold gently,

something that could carry my thirst,

my love,

my lonely little heart.

And I waited.

God knows how long I waited.

While others drank happiness with both hands,

I stood there empty,

looking at the sky like a child

waiting for mercy.

Then one day,

God finally placed a glass in my hands.

But it was broken.

Cracked from edge to edge,

sharp enough to wound,

fragile enough to shatter completely

if I held it too tightly.

And I remember smiling anyway.

Because after waiting for so long,

even pain looked like a blessing.

I told myself,

“Maybe I can fix it”

“Maybe love means bleeding quietly”

“Maybe broken things deserve love too”

So I held it carefully.

I tried to mend every crack with my bare hands.

But the more I tried,

the deeper it cut me.

My fingers bled first.

Then my heart did.

And the cruelest part is…

I never hated the glass.

I only hated the feeling

that if I let it go,

I might never receive another one again.

So now I sit here,

hands covered in invisible wounds,

asking myself questions

that keep me awake at night

Do I keep holding this broken glass forever

just because it was given to me?

Do I continue bleeding

just because I once begged God for it?

And if this is the only glass written in my fate…

am I supposed to die protecting the thing

that keeps hurting me?

Maybe the saddest thing about love

is not the breaking.

Maybe it’s loving something so much

that you start believing

your pain is the price

for being allowed to hold it.

And honestly…

I still don’t know what hurts more

the cuts in my hands,

or the fear

that putting the glass down

might mean losing love forever.

Not the loud kind. Not the kind that announces itself or asks permission. It’s quieter than that, patient, almost polite. The way a locked drawer still remembers what was once placed inside it. The way a photograph keeps staring long after the moment has gone.

They don’t want more. They want again.

Again the touch that used to pass through them without thinking. Again the voice that filled their emptiness so naturally it never felt like emptiness at all. Again the version of time when nothing had yet been named as “over.”

And when you stand too close to them, you start to feel it too. That pull backward, not toward answers, but toward echoes that refuse to die properly.

Old things don’t beg.