Opportunities

"Please teach me." She asked him softly.

"Teach you what?" He looked out of the window, shattered glass at his feet. Her face was looking down as she sat on her knees, studying a thousand of his reflections in the mirror like shards below. He seemed a little impatient. She didn't flinch at the annoyance in his voice.

Her eyes, the eyes of a moon nymph drowning, looking into his, the eyes of the sea god who was drowning her. "Teach me about life."

"What is life?" His voice broke slightly, and before it could be seen, he was looking out of his window again. "It is nothing but broken words, stolen from the lips of lovers that had been doomed a long time ago. It is a thousand poniards wedged in the heart of a man who cannot die. It is the black tar on the soul of a woman who cannot breathe." He laughed bitterly, "Life is nothing but an opportunist. It drains your soul. And all it ever offers us in return, are opportunities of sadness and hardship."

"It also gives us a time to be happy and to be joyful."

"Not to everyone. To most of us, life only offers equal opportunities in dark silences, and deep gaping wounds of our already broken hearts."

"At least it's fair."

He turned to look at her, confused for the first time since he had been broken into pieces of shattered glass.

She was no longer sitting, but standing up, looking at him eye to eye. "It grants us all equal opportunities. Good or bad. It's up to us to realize what we want to do with them."

He sighed and looked down at the floor of broken glass. "What can I possibly teach someone who believes such things?"

A  soft hand slipped into his calloused, bleeding one. "You can teach me how to love you. And maybe then you'll realise that life gives us opportunities to love it too."