“To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color.”

“On the heels of his words, the front window exploded. As if time slowed down, he watched the shards of glass scatter across the floor, luminous crystals dancing about the wooden slats of the floor like insects scurrying in choreographed retreat.”

“...occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.”

“The day his dad didn’t come home, it was like a huge window over their heads had shattered, and every day they were walking through the broken pieces. Nothing fit together. Nothing made sense or seemed connected to anything else, and every step hurt. Maybe in Lichport he’d find a missing shard or two that would help him start piecing things back together.”

“And there in the snow lay the pictures, like jewels bedded in white silk. They were paper-thin sheets of colored transparent isin glass of every size and shape, some round, some square, some damaged, some intact, some as large as church windows, others as small as snuffbox miniatures.”

“Standing by the frozen glass, he stared down at the icy, barely lit streets running towards the river Seine, the bell-clanging local church, then to the sky like black lead. ("Israbel")”