Work Text:
1. Window
I think some people expected us to be reflections of each other - identical in all aspects simply because we were born on the same day.
They were wrong - adults often tended to be, we’ve found.
In fact, we’ve become polar opposites in some aspects, different in upbringing, personality, even education but sharing the same blood, not quite alike in features or interests, even if people sought to make parallels.
I’m no worse, but I'm no better than him.
We’re two different people standing opposite each other with a window between us.
It never was a mirror.
I think sometimes we wish it had been.
2. Eyes
Sometimes I think I can spot my reflection in their eyes, a glimpse of a person I recognise and it’s much like looking in a mirror, except there’s a filter of colour over my face that makes me think of a stranger first.
Inevitably though, I recognise myself and I’m found left with questions and half formed thoughts.
In the darkness of the night, I can’t help but wonder what I might look like in their eyes, how they see me and if-
If I’m wrong.
I don’t think I can handle it though, so I’m charming and handsome and all the pretty words I can ever let slip from my mouth, because if I’m wrong-
I don't want to be wrong.
I can't and yet-
I think I might be.
3. Memory
I can’t remember my face.
I see strands of hair from the corner of my eye, see how they weave the strands in their fingers and know the colour of it. I hear him speak colours at me and sure, they have some form of meaning, maybe he’ll even draw me some days but I can’t recognise her as the girl that I am.
The person I’ve become.
She’s all but a stranger, still and unmoving, a copy of what he might see me as, but I’ll never get to view through my own eyes.
Not as I was or how I turned out to be.
I don’t think I’d be able to tell, even if something had changed.
4. Vanity
She laughs at me, preening at the mirror but I know she’s torn about it - not quite jealous or longing but lacking in understanding. So, she asks me and I try to explain but the words are never quite enough because she’ll never be able to quite comprehend this ever again.
Things are lost over time, so I’ll memorise this face, mostly unchanged, mine forever, unaltered when so many things would be unable to quite stay the same.
I memorise each new scar, chronicle when I received it, every slight wrinkle, the exact shade of my eyes, the way my skin looks in certain lighting, the curl of my hair.
I think she knows that some part of me fears I might become like her - she tells me it's something I won't ever have to worry about, not in the way that I'm thinking.
It’s still early though.
5. Curtains
The first thing I do when I return is check that they are still raised, a useless habit considering I have to bring myself to tear them down in case someone comes over, rare as it may be.
But alone, alone I have the privilege of drawing velvet curtains and hiding from it, no glint of reflective surface to remind me of the thing that rests on my neck in place of where something softer used to be. Skin where there is now only bone, alive and in need of a breath, with eyes that could cry and lips that could smile.
My mother keeps the photos from me, for my sake, she says.
So all I have to go on is imagining what was stolen.
I crave it - I think it could help, getting it back - so I long and I wish and I hope that I can one day claw back my face with my own hands.
6. Sew
I’m a glimmer of silver and gold, each careful stitch made by loving hand and tender care, a wish for someone to understand, to live and not leave.
I’ve learned how to do it myself now, how to keep myself together when parts of me are falling apart, the thread in one hand, a mirror in front of me.
Sometimes, I let them do it for me.
I wish I had let them do it more often.
I’ve learned how to mend clothes, patch faces, darn holes but I didn’t quite learn how to mend the expression my reflection makes, every time I look at her across from me, nothing behind her and no-one in front of her.
I don’t think it’ll be something I’ll be able to fix alone.