The Mirror

Quarantine ( 14 Days in Isolation )

It is day six.

I keep my camera turned off and am lulled to sleep by zoom lectures.

I dream of doodling caricatures of my classmates.

My bed is turned on its side,

A dirty sheet hangs from the frame,

Tented over a bird’s nest of collected brittle twigs and stolen treasures,

Charging cables are woven through the exposed bed springs.

There are flash cards and candy wrappers hidden in fuzzy blanket folds,

Piles of clothes and uncased pillows.

This is where I sleep.

I wake up with a spine that clicks and squeaks like an ancient rocking chair.

What will I gain in getting out of bed?

Cold toes and a heavy head.

My eyes are heavy,

The skin of my face feels heavy,

I was too afraid to look at myself in the mirror last night.

The blue and purple caverns where my hazy eyes perch,

The red bumps on my forehead, my chin, my cheeks,

The dirt caked in the creases of my nose.

I slept with my makeup on.

How can I face my own reflection when I live this way?

The glass knows all of my insecurities.

I want to iron out the deep wrinkle between my eyebrows,

I want to be locked alone in the far right stall

Hide from myself

Vomit up all of the sour words that line my throat and coat the inside of my mouth.

But I cannot stand being vulnerable

Even when it’s just me and the reflection of a girl in the water of a toilet bowl

Washed out by the fluorescent lights of a shared bathroom.

I see through her like a ghost.

Reflection

The girl in the mirror has my eyes, but she has no hold on me, 

She is who I have become and who I never wished to be.

Her gaze is laced with loathing and her cheeks are stained with red,

And she smiles my crooked smile, placing doubts inside my head.

With soft hands she reaches out and pulls me to her chest,

She assures that I can trust her and she urges me to rest.

I feel my warmth within her and I let my worries rise,

But she sings to me the worst of them and fills me up with lies.

Her whispers sink beneath my skin and penetrate my mind,

Until I too recite the words that she has gently redesigned.

I tell myself I’m wicked,

Selfish, 

that my morals have gone awry,

For she tucked these insults behind my tongue when she saw my lips were dry.

She looks at me with pity for my lack of her perfection,

But as I shatter the mirror, I pity the girl that dies with my reflection.

Ninth Grade

You are unique, different, an individual.

You are the new girl, the quiet one, the listener; invisible.

You are different, and they don’t see you.

You are other, you are far away,

This is otherness…

Otherness is envy,

Otherness is grief,

This otherness must be overcome.

Through the change you keep your head held high,

You know that optimism is the key to life.

And because of this you make new friends,

Because of this your new life begins.

The Shadow of an Ideal Image

She wakes up every morning at the same time.

6:00 a.m. on the dot.

I always need to see an even number on my alarm clock,

But if she sleeps in by a minute, 

She’ll stand up at 6:01.

She pulls a string, lifts the blinds and looks out at a black sky,

She smiles down at the city from her castle on the hill,

She counts all of the little lights that she can see down in the valley,

Acknowledges every open window, 

She is humbled by the magnitude of early risers.

I live in a microcosm,

My world is a fraction of hers,

I have half as much oxygen, and twice as many problems.

She brushes her perfect teeth,

She washes her face,

Droplets of water roll off of her skin the way rain rolls down car windows,

She makes the mundane beautiful.

She makes her bed.

She ties her shoes,

She doesn’t step on the backs of her sneakers and slide them on like I do.

She leaves without stopping to look in the full length mirror that hangs on the back of the door,

She doesn’t care if anyone sees her arms,

Or if her shirt is baggy and makes her look wider than she actually is,

She cares only about how she feels.

She doesn’t let words from last night linger in the back of her head.

Life would be so easy if I could be like her, If I could be her,

I am her shadow,

I look up at her standing in the light,

She is what the world sees.

I cower behind her,

Terrified that someday, someone will think to look back here,

That they will notice me, 

belly to the floor, 

clinging to her ankles,

Trying to claw my way up her calves,

Trying to prop her up,

Trying to pull her down.

Undiagnosed

Are the static black and white dots on the television screen ever really going in any direction?

Or are they just moving to take up space, to pass time, to alleviate pain?

Waltzing to the songs of midnight.

Looking through a window at night, I see nothing.

Glass holds back the ink of the outside world,

The glossy black of that night sky is framed by a lightly-stained, wooden pane.

Is this what Sleep looks like? 

Is this what Sleep’s brother Death looks like?

Can a little dancing dot on an unwatched screen have a meaningful death?

Can a little dancing dot on an unwatched screen have a meaningful life?

Or can she only be sent off to sea 

When the passing nights have squeezed out every last drop of her sense,

When she is purple and pruned,

When she is too weak to remember, 

When she is only strong enough to clutch a small box to her chest filled with small things.

 Newspaper clippings, crumpled receipts, and old birthday cards.

The sun is breathing on the back of the hills and such thoughts hide behind the moon.

But will I think of these things again when the lights dim?

When the glowing orange streets flicker back to life, will my faucet turn back on?

Will my worries snarl and knot themselves again, clogging up the drain?

Or will I spit in the eyes of fear tonight?

Have I gagged the ghost?

Did I find the strength to sew shut the mouth of the monster that lives behind my ears?

Their voices used to sound the way that stepping on glass feels.

Sharp.

Wet.

Shards digging beneath callused skin, pushing past soft parts, trying to kiss blood.

They used to tell me to tuck in my stuffed animals at night.

They used to tell me to do everything in sets of threes.

They used to tell me to close my door just enough, so that a single sliver of light would paint a stripe across my carpeted floor.

They used to tell me that the falling leaves would bring about car accidents.

They used to tell me to never look out the window at night.

They used to tell me that I would die in my sleep if I didn’t say my prayers just right.

Sometimes I still hear their whispered cries.

Sometimes they tell me what spoons I can and cannot use.

But most days I don’t hear them at all,

I’m too busy dancing with other glowing dots,

To hear the voices in my head telling me to be afraid of life.

Robot

She is bionic in body, mind, and soul,

With webs of wire veins twisting and pulsing with sickeningly strong bursts of electricity around a central cardiac console.

There are circuits where her heart should be that tirelessly translate her computer brain codes,

Circuits that receive and amplify digital songs sent out by waves of mathematical sequences composed of glowing, red zeroes.

All interpreted by an operating system deemed technologically flawless, 

One that is the shining product of white coat elixir and the dreams of a seventh grade, four-eyed genius.

A Technologically flawless example of artificial intelligence however, cannot compute the complexities of the human mind.

Love, hate, lust, and desire are induced by fired neurons and codes that were not included when her central circuitry was designed.

But she was well programmed, and when fully charged, her inner electronics can replicate the adrenaline released when humans experience fear, 

Making up for the romantic emotions she lacks, but not erasing the fact that the bionic girl could short circuit with a single tear.

With her bionic brains, the robot girl can’t help the fact that she isn’t breathing, 

Just like she can’t help the fact that her heart beeps instead of beating.