The Slow-Cooked Sentence

“Fragments” courtesy of erix!

It was dark when the birds woke her, but instead of trying to go back to sleep she got up and walked into the kitchen. In the shadows, she made a pot of coffee and carried a cup to the rocking chair near the window. She sat quietly, drinking the hot, bitter coffee, watching the charcoal outline of the neighborhood emerge. She didn’t notice the tree until the sun had climbed high enough to pour warm, yellow light across the lawns and climb up the sides of houses. When the sun touched the tree, it split into a million bits of light.

Outside, she was blinded for a moment by the sparkling tree. Tiny rainbows danced across the sidewalk, the lawn, the car, the house. Its trunk was smooth and cold, and a breeze blew through the stiff leaves and carried away the sound of tinkling glass. She snapped off a thin branch, held it up against the sun and watched as a bird flew across a green sky. She let it slip through her fingers and watched it fall to the ground where it splintered. Gingerly, she picked her way through the glass and moved to the porch.

The sun climbed. High up a branch broke, tumbled through the canopy of leaves, everything breaking, glass peppering the ground. More branches, more leaves fell until the whole tree came crashing down in one shattering roar. Then silence. She exhaled and the birds renewed their song. Where the tree once stood was a hill of broken glass, green and brown shards stabbed the dirt and littered the sidewalk. The sun climbed and she took a sip of coffee, but it was cold. So she went inside for another cup and a broom.