Edge

The edge is near. Thin and angled, it looms. I am afraid. One tap and I will fall.

Spindly fingers wrap around my waist, lift me up. The air roughs down me. I love this feeling of racing, higher and higher, but I dread what comes next.

The inevitable arrives. Plump, sticky lips brush my rim, shapely hands tilt me till I’m dizzy. The waxy lips leave smudges on me, erode my glass; the red sugared liquid inside me drains away.

I am brought towards the table again, and I hope, I hope, I hope I will be placed in the secure middle, far from the cat, the floor, the fear; far from the edge that scares me so.

Today is my unlucky day. I am placed on the edge, my sculptured base shaking with my trembles.

I agonize for hours. Both woman and man have left, off to their harried lives. There is no one to move me to the center of the table, to soothe my fractured calm.

Almost no one. The cat slinks in, eyeing me. I observe him as he observes me. His tail, long and firm, could be my savior.

He leaps, graceful, dignified, onto the chair beside me, onto the table from the chair. The table shivers from the added weight.

It used to be so solid.

The tail molds around my waist, but this time I am not lifted up, I’m pushed, the tail silken and deadly, the edge looming, closer, closer….

I fall to my shattered death.