It's time to meet his parents

His mother is fake nice

She mispronounces my name

Massacres it with a hatchet smile

Repeatedly

He warned me

She may be like this

Seeing how I am not

One of her hand-picked selections

I lack the proper breeding and poise

Like a fucking show animal

So I warmly smile back at her

Amused with the knowledge

Her favorite son

Loves my name

In fact

In just a few short hours

I will have him whimpering it

You suffocate me

Watching me from afar

Filling my senses with green

I want to change

Push you away from me

You are part of me

Trying to reprogram me

Your claws dig into my skin

Making me feel alone

Isolated from the world

Who am I?

Your claws cut me deep

Until I bleed,

Into the person you want me to be

Until I lose myself completely

To the version I ache for

To the girl society wants me to become

Until the only reminder

Of the person I once was

Comes from the scars left behind

And the name that belonged to that girl who I left in the dust

My eyes feel darker as I look at her,

The self of me in the mirror.

Here she stands, tipping her head forward and down as if to look up at me like she's sizing me up. She doesn't smile, she doesn't speak. We both know our voices to be deeper than average. No less feminine and dainty than if we wanted, but that is not why we are here today.

For as much as she is me, I am her, because I know she is asking me the question I cannot tell her yes to.

Almost like we're about to trade places, I could imagine myself beating on the mirror from the other side to hear to reason. To not paint the room in red, and that the splatter of it would be deeper the more vibrant the red. A color we could admire and pretend to taste until it turned maroon nearly, then brown, and crumble away like the dust we wish upon those who slightest us.

For where our teeth glitter prettily, I know in her mind, she could see the world burn, and she'd freely admit to it. Because in her, the wrong is only right when you're caught somewhere along where more hands can become a stop.

A force in which our torrential power might no longer commit to sinning in the way men in war drop caltrops.

And she might smile for something so evil, so sinister. In the way that it irks me because I know she could wrap her hands around another neck as if it were her own and squeeze. Squeeze tight like the way she saw the marks upon her own predecessor, and watch the color of someone's face turn from pale to red and purple.

And my stomach might clench, because somewhere in me, we might be the same. In the thrill of it. In the kill of it, and that apathetic part of her is just as much a part of me as it is her very personality. She is a demon in my image, and we are twins. One in the same. The only difference is she's behind the mirror, but I am not all the same. I am not behind the mirror, smiling in silence with soundless words beckoning her closer in like she does me. Wishing to rid the world of evil, a match for match in the hands of a blind woman who tips scales in favor of balancing all else out.

You cannot balance out life with lack there of, but she'd ask for it. She'd ask for her one opportunity to shine, to be that very thing that gets to dance and sing. And so I shudder, shudder away from her, to imagine she'd ever be free, because if she didn't let that old bag's wind fall out of her sails, she'd be sitting in prison instead on this day.

Thank God we are not one in the same in that we act upon our wishes. She may have hers. Her wants, but I do not act on wishes and whims. I wait for evil to long since die, to die alone, and abandoned where it belongs. But she wishes for blood and flesh, in a way that cannot be undone.

We are not one in the same. Only looking so. In a mirror, where her dead eyes go.

Mine are full of life and this is where we are not the same. This is where we parted ways, a decade long ago. But I know she's waiting, waiting for me to give up the reigns and give her one last final fight. But if anything, if I can give all my might... We will not feast on any blood, not then and never on this new nights.

What looks at me from the mirror

speaks in backwards

tongue

I say "hi,"

The mirror listens

and says, "I."

"Aye...!?!" I ask

my reflection in horror

the mirror answers

in short,

"Eye."

I look more closely

crossing both my eyes

vainly

wondering which one

the right or the left?

I turn east and west

and the mirror

shakes its head.

04.12.2025

Mirror You, Mirror Me challenge @Bunny

Look into his eyes. He is the version of you who gave in, but only in a specific definition of dark. Most of the dark versions of you would no longer be reflected in the mirror because their darkness poisoned their psyche until death looked like the end of the depression, like the answer to every unsolvable question. This reflection, this version, gave into the darker parts of you that hated others instead of yourself, that lashed out, that trauma dumped because reflection-you thought everyone ought to know what they condemned you to, that intentions didn't excuse what you left to survive. On some level, you agree, but he actually acts on the anger you suppress and project and hide for fear of what unleashing it might result in. He has seen the results - unwashed hair, homeless rather than housed in the home you know, rather than tolerate being a victim of other's decisions, your mirror counterpart is entirely a victim of his own making. He chooses isolation over connection again and again, unable to believe a softer version of reality is even possible. You know softness, but also know the danger hidden in avoiding all intimacy altogether.

The longer the mirror-self avoids others, the more dangerous their intentions, their existence, appears because he's forgotten the good times. He can no longer remember the reason you stay somewhere with a mirror to even see him in the first place. No longer remember why he had ever let anyone touch him, no longer remember being that six year old who worshipped her older brother, thought he hung the stars in the sky, thought her parents could never lie. She, her softness, her love, is all he can sneer at when stares back at you. You, who lets this continue, who hides somewhere inside yourself as your brother takes and takes and calls it love.

You hate yourself, you see him and see a version that fought, that got out but never truly got the happy ending escape was meant to bring. Are these your only options? Drown or float, the current never letting your body hit land? Your reflection disappears, blocked by the tears that show up. There's a reason most dark versions never survive past adolescence. Most die by their own hand. Seeing, growing into adulthood and still being used by someone who claims to love you, still unable to stop him, seeing that even the version who escaped still looks lost and miserable. What point does continuing down this life even hold? You hold the tunnel with no light at the end to your eye like a telescope, peer through the darkness and your mirror-self looks entirely unchanged. He probably knows what you can't see, whatever tether that keeps you trapped in your family was cut years ago for him and yet. And yet he's still you, still as hopeless and pathetic as you feel. Or maybe less pathetic, since rage holds more power than grief does, but you're both still suffering. Suffering from sex ought to be a goddamn oxymoron. And yet... and yet...

And yet your brother still sees you in ways you can never be able to unsee yourself as. Ways no amount of mirror-gazing will make you see yourself as. You can't want yourself the way he wants you, neither version, not the mirror who ran nor the reality who plays dead, neither can turn fraternity into eros. You wish you could; your mirror-self wishes nobody ever felt that way at all. You wish you could steal away into the mirror world - at least there you’re unwanted.

Mirror mirror that stands in front of me

Am I blind or just can't see

The beauty that God has put upon me

Or blinders for the people who thought that they could see.

The strength and Durance I use to create

An image of beauty to shove in your face

Yet somehow none of this relates

To the monster my soul tries to create.

Be real, be myself and they will love me the same.

Not only enhance but put the rumors to shame

At that point there is no one to blame

So pick my head up and walk the same .

Mirror mirror please show me more

Of the woman inside me that I adore

That never seems to be a bore.

Because the more I see, I want more!

Mirror mirror on the wall

who is the fairest of them all?

not you my queen

for your soul is hideous

it bares scars from long ago

wounds barely masked with bandages of feigned confidence

pockmarks of envy and inability to love unconditionally

gashes of hatred

bruised with insecurity

for you shall never be the fairest

but dear mirror

i try

im a good person

dont actions outweigh thoughts?

i raise a daughter, treat her as my own

teach her not to make my mistakes

let her remain unblemished by the evils of the world

i swallow resentment

and i try to heal my soul

but much as i cannot will broken bones to heal

i cannot will my soul to become whole again

for it is damaged

i am damaged

nevertheless

the fairest is a pure soul

one who does not make mistakes

one who has remained good throughout

one who has never strayed from the path of righteousness

one whose mind is carefree and innocent

weightless conscious

not like you my queen

never you my queen

for you are damaged

broken

hefty but of no substance

your actions are for naught

to be the fairest

all must fail

the good must be erased

green must be violet

the sun must stop rising

the sky will snow a sheet of red not white

and the world must be hit with a landslide and tip upside down

until then you my queen cannot

Mirror,

you

are right,

we grow to live

with our Ghost

all in parallel universe

wash and wear

rinse and repeat

we blow kisses

into the wind

upon that Narcissus train

of moving things

...Life...

...goes on...

but we are always 17

or whatever age

it was

we became

unhinged

and realization

opened

to us

like a photo album

or a needle

on a record

and drew

the mental picture

of Everything

as burial...

leaving its

dinosaurs

upon our chests

and we answer

with form

and structure

as poetry

as essay

in silence

like the Concentrics

on a tree

or

Stratigraphic

soil testing

where we can see

eras of our Life

all these things

mirror, you

as mute

accomplice

hide and see

I see myself in shades of monochrome, skin dusted ash and hair singed with every shade of dye I've ever subjected it to. But the mirror's hair hasn't been chemically straightened. It falls in unruly, long curls. Somehow I can make out the caramel it grew as once upon a time. Her face is gaunt, the cut I got on the bridge of my nose when I was thirteen clear as day and beaded with fresh blood.

I tilt my head infinitesimally. The mirror stays the same. Watching. Haunting.

"Don't like the sight of me, sweetheart?" The mirror asks— it's my voice, I'm sure of that, but pitched higher.... softer. Younger. I cringe at the familiarity, as it had once been mine before I had killed my lungs and throat with smoke and liquor. The nickname, one I had never uttered as it had been my father's for me.

I don't respond. I know the mockery, having wielded it as my favourite weapon for so very long. It's evident in the rise of her eyebrows, the flash of iris' that speak of nothing but anger whereas mine are horribly clouded by pills and home-made potions. I am not sure which is worse, cowering beneath that hateful gaze. Cruel, and unabashedly searching for something to caddle-prod at. My eyes fall to her arms, knuckles white around the lip of the linoleum sink. She has no tattoos, but has every open wound, every bruise, every inch of pain that my body healed from.

She is nothing but a mottled desperation. I meet her gaze.

"I'm sorry." Is all I can say. Because I am. This little girl— masquerading as an abuse-prone teen, deserved the world. Sorrow, black and barren and hideous plunged through me.

Her eyes drag from the roots of my hair— all one solid colour, but I'm insecure as my hands rises to cover it— to the ink snaking down to my palms.

She scoffs, "You're not. You left me to handle everything you couldn't. Because youre weak." She leans forward, her grin broad— all uneven teeth and vitriol. "But yet you're worse than I am. Aren't you?"

I grind my teeth down onto my tongue until it hurts. "I don't know what you mean." I return thick with poison on my forked tongue that forms stories, heretics behind an enamel cage.

But she is my epic, deep and dark. Taunting. Haunting. "You still hurt those you love. Your eyes strayed from the perfectly loving girl at home, to someone who reminded you of the first person to ever give you attention—"

"—Thats not true—"

"—It's what happened, isn't it? You left her because she didn't fit your idea of a romantic fairytale you love to write about. And you spin lie after lie, or worse, tell everyone who will listen the things you were entrusted with the second you feel jealous, or less then. Because you cannot stand being disliked."

I burn with every lick of heat I have endured and in turn, bottled. "I need to move forward, not stay back. I'm imperfect, but I'm not evil. You were. Or... I was." I blink a few times, like trying to clear the spots in my vision when I get too anxious. She mirrors me, almost like a tic she doesn't know she's doing.

Unity, I think. We are still the same person, no matter my aging face and her broken body. "I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you." I say, mapping the bruises on her body and subconsciously touching mine with the pads of my fingers like I'm expecting the pain to be there. But it isn't anymore.

"The difference between you and I, lovely girl, is that I never pretended to be good, or kind, or nice. But every day you pretend to be something you aren't, weren't bred to be, like you're trying on faces and seeing which one appeals the most. Will give you the love you have never been able to accept, or feel. Like you'll be cleansed of your sins, and yet—" Her arms arch wide to their sides, something I don't do because I hate mine, and I stare at the broken dominant hand that still hasn't properly healed after three years. I cringe, again, because she is the embodiment of all I want to forget, laid out so obvious to the naked eye instead of the eye of memory. "—You seek me out. Because I was the happiest you ever were. When you were free to terrorize without any guilt, or shame. When you took, and took, and left nothing but trauma and pain in your wake. And that's why no one has ever stayed longer than a year."

She knows the person with pale skin, and kind eyes. And I know the entity that bleeds dark, and stains eternal.

"You do not know me. I am trying. I feel guilt, and shame, because I'm not you. I may have been at a time, but I feel remorse and that— that is the difference. You feel nothing of what you've done, and toss it from memory like a coin into a shallow pool because it's easier. But I don't want easier. I want to feel. I want to remember what I've done."

The anger I had felt since I was so very young cracked and broke, letting in my deep sadness.

And yet... I kept going back. For more and more, while tiny little fists beat at my ribs until she was bruised and moulted in and out, too.

I couldn’t stop.

"I am the soul, after all. You cannot kill that."

"It didn't stop me from trying." I muse, finally looking away from the monster staring through me. I swallowed the flame of anxiety in my throat, hot liquid in my stomach. "So why are you here?"

I hear my laugh, but it's wrong and it hurts. A pause, but she never stops with her chattering teeth and humming. Like it's helping her pain. But I should know, it doesn't. "Remember how they said the absued becomes the abuser? Back in high school, I mean."

I laugh dryly. "Yeah, I remember it all too well."

Chattering. Humming. Haunting. Taunting.

"Ever thought... maybe you're your own abuser?" She says it with a grin. Her words aren't as sure as mine, because all she knows is teasing, and humour. She is stuck in the mirror, watching me in snippets, when I have lived as her. I know her as the amalgamation of all I have hated of myself.

So when I look at her, I feel the cold pricks of the past on my spine, feel the phantom ache in my bones and on my flesh. "I swear, if I could, I would give my life so you could have grown up better. Been better."

She stumbles back, affronted. I shake my head, and leave the bathroom, plunging her into darkness again. But I'll see her again, soon, as I always do. In the reflection of my laptop and phone, in the rearview mirror, in the bottle of a glass with the sheen of my drink. And we will have this conversation again. Sometimes she is angrier. Sometimes I am meaner.

Perhaps we are exactly the same person.

Hello, my shadow. I know you want to be dark, and deep, but you can't help laughing—inappropriately. A case of the giggles in the middle of a biopsy. Or you're on a train, and dreaming of that girl with canine teeth. Which always turns you on. Something so wicked, so primal. So ancestral. You let out a laugh, as the other passengers pretend not to notice. In a distant past you'd be swinging through trees together, jumping to the ground, and leaping into a fuck. You'd push her down and suck tongues through your canines. Maybe it's because you've got 'em too, that girls with canines turn you on so much. Yeah, we're not so different, you and me. We both like that. Even when the moon's not full.

4/11/2025