Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora

Green World through Broken Glass

Green World through Broken Glass H HAALE Mama had a shoebox for every decade she endured. Enough space to keep anything worth keeping, she’d said. Behind old vacuum parts, a frayed curtain, she hid them—misshapen, dog-eared, bulging boxes I never opened. I’d just sit in front of their stunted tower, wondering when it struck her, this urge to hold, only things. Mama, with her blunt endings, leaving half-diced carrots on the counter, returning seven dinners later, no words. I pictured her riding open roads, trapped by burly men in some pool hall, dead in a ditch, or on a beach in daylight stopped by a seashell or by the green world through broken glass she decides to keep clenched in her fist, letting it cut, on the edge of the tide. GREEN WORLD THROUGH BROKEN GLASS 311 ...