center stage

A tear dribbles

Along the inner lid

Peaking through the dark,

The hole,

Of a blinking kid.

A sea of blue,

Mixed with white,

In a way others say they don’t loathe,

But might.

I watch it glimmer,

The bathroom light shimmers,

I wait for it to tell me

All it has begun to remember.

.

Eyes glance back at mine-

A splitting image

Though flipped

To show the view

Of a girl whose wings got clipped.

.

The rooms of the apartment

Drawl out in boredom

In the silence of its solitude.

A lonely presence that forms-

Not when no one,

Or someone,

Is there,

But only when I am

As if I am reality’s tear.

.

In a way of defiant stillness

A cue is thrown

To the curtain my way

Opening up the act

That tilts a smile, as if to say,

“soon we will play.”

.

A test of a downward grin,

A falter that is felt for miles.

Backups with faces for tiles,

A shine of proportioned praise

Sent out in hopes to amaze.

A blurred crowd of cheers

Mixed with backwashers who sneer.

.

The girl flipped

To and from

Takes foothold

As the slab of perception

Finds her foot on stage

And takes the center praise.

.

Silent words are whispered

And someone pleads,

“She just needs someone to kiss her”

Disappointment flakes in a falter

In the pose that mimics the soul she malters.

.

Big, small,

Fast, tall,

Creatures of both and all

From seemingly nothing to shawl.

All faces covered

To hide the soul,

bland as that damn bathroom wall.

.

The curtain’s long gone,

The time is far from calm,

The threat for brawn

Plays its move, as a pawn,

In the game where the queen

Watches her king

Get taken, with a yawn.

.

The lights are dimming,

Footsteps are creaking,

The sound of another

Getting close to an unwanted brother-

One where frustration dwells

On the stage repeatance tells

The same tale of clumped cells.

.

The lead takes center stage

Looking out into the broken up crowd

That shares my lefts and rights

And quickly, but quietly,

Informs the room

from where it was set

That held all the characters they had just met.

.

A whisper is slipped,

The door creaks open,

The curtains come a-closin’

And a hand shoots up to wipe

The untouched tear away

And it’s the loudest words

The stage will hear her say:

“It’s like I’m still in there.”

I wrote this to try to understand the minutes and hours I’ve spent in front of that bathroom mirror. The one in my childhood home, the one in my empty apartment, my dorm room, my friend’s room, guest rooms, rooms, rooms rooms. All with their own stories, their own baggage, their own lives lived. Yet there was the same girl in that mirror. Naked, alone-wrapped, proud—it was all the same. Different girl, same body. Different body, same girl.

Ever since I was young, I would use dissociation to survive. The mirror was the key to that. What better way to detach from oneself and the pain than by detaching from the body you see reflected back? I’d stare into my own inverted eyes until I no longer saw them. Instead, I saw eyes that looked like mine moving across my face, growing big and small, as my face distorted with it. I’d watch faces and colors, foreign and familiar, take up the space that once held me and my pain. I’d watch my features swim in my tired hallucination, and sometimes take hold of a form, whenever I saw a face that was like mine but not. One that I could see humanity in, sympathy, understanding. And then I would do my ritual. I would look at this new person, and I would throw my burdens on them. I would watch their eyes dim, the tears well, but never drop. I’d watch the muscle in their jaw tickle as a sob lodged in their small throat. I, being a separate from her, watching this girl going through what she was. How I would respond, and how I wouldn’t. I imagined myself as my mother, my father, those who cared for me but didn’t. I imagined telling her the words she was told, I was told, and feeling the true intention, the backstory, being in their shoes. In her shoes, in his. Understanding the root of the words, rather than the fluff of lies that cascaded into calculated manipulation in the name of false peace.

Then I’ll blink, and I’m brought back. The features that swimmed, stuck in a riptide of movement called haziness and a desperate separation from the self, came back to the girl who looked back at me through that frame. No matter the frame, no matter the girl, it was all the same. I couldn’t go back and take the words out of their mouths. I couldn’t force myself to shed that tear. I couldn’t be enough for them, and I couldn’t be enough for me to not ever have to rely on anyone, ever. Yet in that alternate reality, that new creation of a girl, different every time, is stuck in that frame. I can glimpse at her in moments where emotions overwhelm me, and bring me to a state where my lense is focused on her. On the idea of her, and the different varieties that make her, her. I have found that through this exercise, I learned I have more sympathy for a warped feature-full girl in a dirty mirror than I ever had for myself. Now, whenever I find myself stuck over that sink, unable to move, unable to leave the girl staring back, in fear of being left again, I remember the sympathy I have for her. And I give it to me. Hours turn to minutes. Minutes turn to seconds. And suddenly, time is on my side. It no longer traps me, but holds me, as I fall into the arms of the cold porcelain sink and the used hand towel, which tenderly wipes away my wordless tears.