Perfect World
The snow globe held a world I never lived in—
perfect, crystalline, untouchable behind glass.
Winter night spills across my window now,
real and imperfect, each flake a small betrayal
of the memory I keep polished in my mind.
There was a version of this life where everything
stayed beautiful. Where sadness was just
aesthetic, snow falling like a movie scene,
not this cold that seeps into bones and settles.
I shake the globe. The fake snow swirls,
and I am eight again, believing in perfection—
that somewhere, someone lived inside
that miniature world where Christmas never ended,
where families stayed whole, where love
didn't crack under the weight of being known.
The real snow keeps falling. Memories
are just another kind of snow globe:
sealed worlds we return to, forgetting
the cracks, the disappointments, how nothing
ever quite matched what we imagined it would be.
And still I press my face to the glass,
longing for that flawless winter night—
the one that never was, the one I can't stop
mourning. Perfect world. Perfect lie.
The snow keeps falling, beautiful and cold.
-Artwork created in Photoshop and additional image-painting programs
-Poetry written by me
-both copyright to ©Stacy Stephens