Fragile

The song ‘Fragile’ by Sting keeps going through my head. I don’t know why but I just keep finding myself humming it or the words going through my head. This has happened several times over the last few days.

Although I don’t think it is the reason it keeps coming to mind, it’s a song that sometimes makes me think back to a time at university. I went back to university one time after the holidays and was told that this chap I knew had killed someone. He had been infatuated with a girl and she had rebuffed him a few times. He then went round to her house to try and talk to her about it and ended up stabbing her to death in a ‘crime of passion’. All rather horrible and he was actually a nice chap (I didn’t know her at all).

I used to go and visit him in prison and he could never quite believe what he had done. We never really spoke about it in any depth, it never seemed quite right to ask him about the details of what had happened, and I knew as much as I needed to through the newspapers anyway. We would just sit there and chat. He was an international student and all his family lived abroad so he wouldn't have got many visitors if I hadn't gone.

They held a memorial service at the university for the girl and they played Fragile as part of the service, which just seemed to sum up what had happened.

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are