We’re Water

“I feel like I’m in a thousand, tiny pieces.”

She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. She was far past the point of trying to be dignified; she knew she looked like shit. Her hair was in tangles, her clothes were wrinkled, and she was sure that her mascara was smeared all over her face. Not that she was about to go looking in a mirror anytime soon.

The day had been tragic enough already.

“But you’re not.” Her younger sister always was the more optimistic one. How was it that she so goddamn hopeful, all the time?

“Yes, I am,” she snarled in a disgusting voice that just sounded like congestion. “I’m ruined, done for, a complete and total wreck. I am officially broken beyond repair.”

“No, you’re not!” Optimistic and opinionated. “You’re not broken because that’s not even possible. Do you really think that the human psyche is like a piece of glass, all fragile and delicate? Like it can literally break?”

“Yes. And I’m a shattered piece of shit.”

“If you were a shattered piece of shit, then you wouldn’t be sitting here, talking to me and giving me that charming look right now,” her sister pointed out. “People aren’t glass, we’re…water.”

“…We’re water,” the older girl repeated dully.

“Yes,” her sister replied, ever confident in her ridiculous, impromptu metaphors. “We are, aren’t we? Like, ninety percent or something. So we can crack, technically, when we’re cold and made of ice, but we’ll eventually melt again, so long as we warm up. We turn back into liquid, fluid and whole…”

The younger sister stared off dreamily into the distance, like she was imagining being… What? A puddle? The older girl scoffed.

But the irritated sound only made the small girl smile. “It’s true,” she concluded firmly, nodding as though settling the matter. “We are water, and you just happen to be in a cold, cracked state of ice at the moment. But it won’t last forever.”

She slung her arm around her older sister’s shoulder, pulling her into a hug. “It will pass sooner than you think, because I’ll help warm you up.”

The older sister buried her head into her chest and cried.