The Snow Globe, by Joshua Kwon

I am Santa Claus trapped in a pearl of glass labeled Cancun on the plaque. Perpetually, I straddle a bottlenose dolphin, my hands gripped on his fins while he swims. We’re just dried pieces of clay in a snow globe, after all.

A thick solution of gluey water sways past our skin, and both Dolphin and I can feel it: it revolts, but we never react. We float in it. Sometimes—when we bounce along the curves of glass in just the right way—we can see the white dust and silver sparkles under us, littering the sandy floor. It’s always funny to see them because it almost never snows in Mexico: a reminder for me and Dolphin that no matter the name on the plaque, we will always be far from the real place.

Fingers once eclipsed the glass around us and pressed so firmly that we could see the ridges imprinted on its skin. That was back in the real Cancun— in the gift shop shack of Sireńa Resort—where we were displayed on the table, facing outward. There was a time when we could gaze at the Caribbean as it stretched out in delightful endless blankets of blue, and watch the sunbathers resting on chairs, sunk into the soft white sands. But that time ended quickly when those fingers came back and swept us up into a plastic bag, then a lump of luggage, sealed away in the attic of an airplane, and finally unceremoniously spat out on a ten-year-old’s disordered nightstand.

Sometimes the ten-year-old would grab us with his chubby fingers and rattle the whole globe violently, whipping the snow through the liquid and watching as it would slowly flutter its way back onto the ground and settle in white puddles. But now we sit in a dark drawer—our new home since the family went on another vacation and replaced us with a globe of the Eiffel Tower. Beside us in this drawer are globes of the Great Wall of China, the Sphinx, and one engraved with the word Bahamas that houses its own dolphin.

We only see the light when the drawer opens again, and another globe joins us (France was replaced by Belgium, and Belgium by Australia). Sometimes, the ten-year-old, who is probably not a ten-year-old anymore, picks one of us up and shakes us for a laugh.

It’s silly but whenever he opens the drawer, Dolphin and I can’t help but half wish that he’d pick us up to shake. Half wishing because the liquid around us is becoming warm and needs a stir; half not-wishing because we don’t want to see anything unless it’s Cancun.

One day, our drawer opens again, and pale, chubby fingers dip into the darkness to pick one of us up. This time, it’s China. Dolphin and I are only half relieved to have not been picked: a sort of push and pull between escaping from the dark and not wanting to know what rests beyond it. Since then, China has never returned to the drawer, and none of us are sure where he’s been. Egypt thinks he’s back on the nightstand, but Hungary (the oldest among us) thinks he’s dropped dead. It’s happened before, he mentions, to a globe from Greece whose glass is now a thousand shards in a dump in Illinois.

Dead. Huh. Interesting.

Now, if I had to estimate, Dolphin and I are seventy-five percent wishing to be picked up next.

After that, the drawer stays closed for a while, as if the once ten-year-old boy had forgotten all about us.

I am Santa Claus trapped in a box of black, where each sway of liquid that flushes by my clay skin feels like molten metal meant to burn me. The muted glitter of the snowflakes thirsts for light to pass through, but it never does, so I watch them in quiet sympathy. I remember they were once white, like the sands of Mexico. That they were much prettier when swept around in our glass globe than how they are now, unmoving, admitting their defeat by blending into the grains of sand.

Dolphin—who once swam below me—is silent. There is no more strength in him to nicker and neigh, and it’s too dark to see him clearly. All I can make out is his silhouette trapped between my legs and in time, I’ve forgotten what he looks like.

By now, we are a hundred percent wishing to be picked up next.

The drawer opens, and the boy (now a man) picks us all up, one by one. There are fifteen of us in total, and Dolphin and I are picked up seventh. The light from the room spills into our glass as the boy holds us. The snowflakes sparkle and sweep up to down as we rise, and I can finally see Dolphin clearly. Ah. Now I remember. He is blue on his back and white on his belly.

Our base that reads Cancun rests on his palm, and I peer over the edge of his fingernails to the floor. The wooden planks gaze back at me, five feet below, and if I could talk, I would tell Dolphin what was on my mind.

I think we’re thinking the same thing anyway.

Dolphin rams his head into our glass wall, and I, on top of him, push with my red-gloved hands so that we wobble. Beneath us, the fingers twitch and the globe around us rolls over the edge of the boy’s palm. We fall towards the black wooden grooves below. As we flip through the air, the snow swirls across the liquid, brushing against the glass, my coat, and Dolphin in glittery ribbons.

We hit the ground.

Our glass shatters, and the liquid jumps out of the fracture. Dolphin’s clay tail breaks off free from the rest of his clay body, and his little clay eyes flicker as if he’s dying. The boy yelps as a drop of blood peters from a cut in his toe, and within a minute, Dolphin’s clay body along with his tail and I are swept into a plastic bag, probably on our way to that landfill with Greece.

The plastic is white, and though I try to let it remind me of Cancun, the picture always slips out of my fingers. If only Dolphin and I had mouths; we would reminisce about Mexico together. Through the plastic, we would strain our eyes against the sunlight until we could see the blurry white sands and until the scent of ocean brine drifted past our noses. But we cannot. We cannot because Dolphin lies dead between my legs, and without him, there is no memory to chase. Now, I am just Santa Claus trapped in a plastic bag, soon to be staring off into an ocean in Illinois.