It was all about keeping the mirror in balance, too close and my eyes were monstrous and my nose in the way, too far and there only seemed to be a clothed insect who buzzed uselessly. My hands used to be like claws. My teeth would gnaw on my fingers, leaving them damp and shiny. That summer of thirteen I was like a plant that had been left inside, skin like wax that had been scraped off that sticky paper on my birthday cakes. On nights when my lungs felt starved of air I walked the streets in my bare feet, ran from my mother when the street lamps shone down on my sharp profile. The balance of the mirror had not been in my favour. In the mirror my eyes looked bruised and my mouth pursed, waiting. Everything was about waiting. I waited for the right moment. I waited for the day the voice inside my mind whispered the right words. I’d obey without question the same way I obeyed when the priest said god was ashamed of me. There was no mirror that last night. The black was endless and the water was cool in my mouth. My hands were stilled as they forgot the connection between mind and body.
As I forgot myself.