Reflection

Reflection

I wake up every morning and look at my reflection in my sterling silver mirror that has vines creeping up it sides which lead to a ruby red rose on top, in the middle. But today is different. Today I look at myself in that mirror and I don’t want anything but to die.

The girl who looks back at me in the mirror is not me. I have long, wavy, raven black hair down to my waist. My lips are a beautifully full and pink and there is always a smile spread out across my face. My eyes are the color of chocolate and they always have a glistening tease about them. But the girl who looks back to me has short, uneven black hair that is dry and muddy; it looks like a boy’s. The girls who is staring back at me has eyes the color of coffee and they are blood shot red. Her lips are swollen and chapped and a smile refuses to fill her face.

I hate her.

The girl in the mirror has slits on her wrists that criss-cross in every direction you can imagine…she scares me. Not because she has so many cuts but because she smiles when she looks down at them. I immediately know that she is sadistic and that I should run away from her but I don’t. “It isn’t your fault.” She whispers to me and I could swear that for a moment I am a paranoid schizophrenic because as far as I am aware, anyone with a seemingly perfect mind does not hear people talk through mirrors.

I tilt my head slightly to the side to see if I heard right and she follows me so I immediately straighten up; but she follows me again. “It is not your fault.” She says, this time more sternly as if she has said it a million times and is exasperated at me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tell her, adamantly, because it is the truth. I don’t know what she is talking about.

“Stop trying to fight it.” She says and I look on in horror. Could it be that she knows the secret that I have been hiding since last night? Did she see the blood stains? The pocket knife? Did she know the knife was gone? Could she still see the rope burns on my wrists and neck?

I do not want to know. Instead of killing her for her intruding behavior, I ball my hands into fist and punch the mirror with my right fast. The shattering of the glass sounds like the shattering of my soul from last night. I wish to ignore it but I can’t and that’s when it hits me. The girl in the mirror is right. I can’t hide the burden that is laying on me. I cannot hide the stains that I have put on my heart.

I fall to my knees in antagonizing pain. Glass shards dig into my skin but I teach myself to ignore the pain. Nothing is worse than the pain of last night.

Nothing is worse than the feel of foreign hands on your body.

Nothing is worse than a stranger touching every part of your being.

Nothing is worse than the feeling of an imbecile clawing through your skin to dig out your soul and stomp on it.

I crawl like a madwoman to my bed, fishing around the junk underneath it. What I am looking for isn’t here, or so I think until my hand touches its leather flesh. I open its pages. They’re yellow from years of not being used. The last page was a stick figure drawing from when I was six.

Oh, how I wish I could be that innocent again!

I turn the pages, twice, until I decide to stop there and begin to feel around for the pen. The pen is as red as the stains from last night’s mistake. The ink that sprawls out across the page is as red as the dried blood on my wrists from last night’s regret.

Last night I was raped. I do not know his name. I do not know how it happened. I try to let that lie sink it, but it won’t. I know exactly how it happened.

The cup is still on the floor on the other side of my bed. It was red just like this ink, just like this pen. I shake my head and my heart spills onto the pages. The cup should have been my first sign that I was close to my demise.

The last thing I felt was his body on top of mine. After that I was numb. I am still numb.

I woke up this morning, dead. I clawed at my hair for hours, shredding it with the scissors. Shredding it like paper going through a shredding machine. I would have considered doing just that if I had one. I broke down after I cut my hair, seeing myself in the mirror so pale. I punched that mirror too, before I broke the big one. I used a chunk of that mirror to peel off my skin but I was unsuccessful. My brain refused to cut my vein.

Now I am writing all of this down on this paper with an open heart. Finishing my story, I rip the page out of the book and walk down the cherry wood staircase as I make my way into the kitchen. I turn on the gas to the black and white stove and burn the letter to a crisp. As the letter burns, so do I…only I burn from the inside out unlike the paper which burns from the outside in.