Here's my turn
I was born not in a cradle, but on a shelf—lined neatly with others like me, each of us polished and pristine, waiting to be chosen, waiting to belong. And then one day, hands reached for me—gentle, hesitant, almost reverent—and from that moment, I ceased to be just glass and metal. I became vision, clarity, a lifeline. Every morning, I wake to the warmth of her fingers sliding me onto her face, her sleepy sighs fogging up my lenses as if she breathes her soul into me before the world even begins. I feel the pulse of her life in the way she leans on me—how she presses me up when she cries, tears streaking my lenses, blurring everything I try so desperately to make clear. I ache when she tosses me carelessly on her desk, forgotten under a pile of books, my arms bent awkwardly as though my bones were left twisted. Yet I forgive her each time she picks me up again, whispering an apology through the way her thumb rubs my frame, the way she breathes on me and wipes me clean like I matter, like I am more than fragile glass. I live for those moments she stares out the window with me perched upon her nose, her gaze soft, her lips parted as though she’s seeing something beyond the horizon. It is then I feel it—her dreams spilling through me, her future shining in the distance, and I become more than a tool, I become her witness. And though I know I will not last forever—that one day I will be replaced, cast aside, left to gather dust in a forgotten drawer—I hold onto the comfort that I was there when her world was hazy and uncertain, that I gave her a way to see, to feel, to believe. And if that is all I am destined for, then it is enough; for in my fragile frame I have held her tears, her laughter, her midnight studies and her sunrise walks, and in my transparent heart, I have carried her life like a secret I’ll never tell.