Glass Cabinets by Per Olvmyr

Fiction

[Man in Bottle]: Photograph by John C. Higgins, 1888 - Met Museum Public Domain

After looking around in the apartment you realize one very important thing.

Perhaps the only time you were truly happy, was when you were four years old and climbed up in that big old glass cabinet.

The wooden frame. The acoustics. The smell of wood.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get the same feeling of happiness; of partially disappearing, but still not?

There are so many places. But almost all of them are the kind you don’t want to be in.

Perhaps that’s why you are so unhappy. All the things that have to be done.

It is way too easy to take the wrong door.

All those doors.

So you try to crawl back into the glass cabinet with all that you’ve got. Your head, your arms, the rest of your body. Just one last time, you say to yourself.

Just one last time.

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Author's Note:

Self-care? I like to go to my favourite cafe, to order, look at, and eventually drink a nice cappuccino. There is something really soothing with all the layers and nice patterns. The cappuccino becomes an inverted Richard Brautigan hat. And then the taste. That's where I find my home. That's where my writing about sugar cubes, buttons, toothpicks and other charming, insignificant things, starts.  

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Per Olvmyr lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by Moonpark Review, Gone Lawn and other magazines. His work was nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net and longlisted for the Wigleaf top 50. He can be found in parks, engaged in conversations with Basset Hounds. 

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