There is a beach made from glass. It sits pristine, shining, tranquil. It is calm and unbothered by such things as time and storm and death, and it plays with the shells and sings to the water.

A hurricane's fury crashes against a beach made from glass. The eye cracks, a window to a soul, lines spiderwebbing through its surface. Water leaks through, dripping down the glass like blood rolling down scarred flesh. The glass resists, trying to knit itself together but it is not cloth, easily mended. The storm's rage is too much. The glass shatters.

There is a beach of broken glass. It sits jagged, wary and unwelcoming. It knows pain, it recognises fear, it understands despair. It screams at the ocean and cuts the feet of unsuspecting strangers. It cuts the hands of those who just want to help and the hearts of those who love it.

Quiet rains weather away at a beach of broken glass. Falling droplets cleanse the salt and dirt and silt from the jagged shards and soften their cutting edges. Prevent them from hurting the others broken bits and pieces of itself. Slowly the rains soften the hard edges and turn the broken glass into sand, one day at a time.

There is a beach covered in sand. It sits soft, relaxing, enticing. It has stared death in the face and plainly said no. It has changed, slowly, so slowly that no one notices until it is completely different.

"Why have you changed?" they ask. They forget that the quiet rains are just as good for metamorphosis as a rushing hurricane, given time and space. "We did not want you to change," they say. They are too caught up in themselves to think that you, too, are a person.

 There is a beach covered in sand. It was a beach of broken glass, once, and before even that it was a beach made from glass. Now the sand wears down broken glass beneath it, which cuts the solid plane of pure, unsullied glass. Above it all the sun shines bright and hot and the sand on top becomes glass again, and the glass far below waits sad but resigned for a new pane to shatter. A new page to be turned, and ink to be spilled mercilessly across it, too.