Tuesday, January 10, 2006

shattered.
shat·ter (shăt'ər)

v., -tered, -ter·ing, -ters.

v.tr.

  1. To cause to break or burst suddenly into pieces, as with a violent blow.

    1. To damage seriously; disable: His health was shattered by the disease.
    2. To cause the destruction or ruin of; destroy: The outcome of the conflict shattered our dreams of peace and prosperity.

v.intr.

To break into pieces; smash or burst.

n.


    1. The act of shattering.
    2. The condition of being shattered.
  1. A splintered or fragmented condition. Often used in the plural: a rare piece of porcelain now in shatters.

[Middle English schateren, from Old English *sceaterian, to scatter.]


...

I was at the university the other day, waiting for a bus back to my apartment. It was too cold to wait outside so I did what most students do when the mercury slips below minus fifteen or so, and moved inside the sliding doors by the Trent bookstore to wait.
As I walked inside I heard my boots crunch. I looked down and was immediately thankful that I was wearing Docs rather than my cloth sneakers. A window, (the unbreakable kind) had been smashed and glass littered the floor. Three quarters of the fragmented glass were still holding tenuously to the window frame. The rest was scattered at my feet.

I was by myself, so I stooped down to pick up a shard. I slipped it into my coat.

Five minutes later the bus drove up, but the vibration from it caused all the glass that remained in the frame to cascade onto the floor in one fluid motion. Bits of glass covered my shoes and snagged on my bootlaces as I crunched over it and out into the cold air to catch my bus, with the bit of broken window clutched in my pocket.

...

1 Comments:

Blogger Shannon. said...

nice visuals.

9:14 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home