Work Text:
I looked in the mirror and didn’t see me.
I remember myself from before.
She had rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes,
and, what I now realize, an innocent aura.
Were there always violet circles under my eyes?
Was my skin always this worn?
Where had the lightness of my spirit gone?
In the after,
the girl in the mirror didn’t seem like me—
At least, not the me I thought I was.
The girl with the bubbly laugh, the easy smile,
the innocent air about her was gone.
In her place,
with a wary and weary expression and a harsher aura,
stood a woman that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
But there was no going back now.