through a glass

you—you've lived in mirrors all your life. yes, you. you know who you are.

in dirty stalls on public playgrounds you lived in mirrors while your gap-teeth grinned
against the glass. you held the ones you couldn’t keep, you hated everyone
who tried to look you in the eye, back then, stooping down to your level
and telling you how to be happy with their switch-gashed smiles filled with dirty bone.
you hated them because your mouth? your mouth was full of nothing, and none of them ever cared
that you were getting chased by hornets to impress the kids who called you “retard” to your face
while your gap-teeth set in little lines, you gave them exactly what they wanted
and you wondered why you never had anything to say when it mattered the most.

in the dog days of after-school you lived in mirrors while the blood ran down your thighs,
after a chance encounter with a near stranger left you shocked awake and drinking water
from the bathroom sink and betting hope on how well you could hide it from yourself,
could call it by any other name than fear itself, because you’d already been taught that sometimes
strength meant shutting up and taking it, and okay, maybe that was sort of true.
but what was even the point of being strong if you only ever ended up losing? it wasn’t fair,
you thought that you knew everything, you thought that you would be okay
and you wondered why you never had the guts to fight back when it mattered the most.

in teenaged dreams you lived in mirrors while your own laughter echoed in your ears when a boy
said that he wanted to hang himself and it was the funniest thing you’d heard all week, remember—
he: a living joke, you: less than human. you were trying to find a familiar face in your reflection,
but it refracted the so that you were bent back through the light, forced to face the fact of that
disgusting creature―your own heart, a freak of nature with no sense of self. the suffering you swallowed up
had starved you down, so that where he bet on hope to bear his wounds you saw only easy prey.
you wasted so much time that way, thinking that the glass was always cleaner on the other side
and you wondered why you never had the peace of mind to tell the truth when it mattered the most.

even now, you live in mirrors. it’s no home at all, but you’ve been housed here too long
to chance a glance through any window. after all, it’s so much easier to forgive yourself
when you turn introspection into a spectator sport, when your earth is fetus in fetu in full-color,
so fearful of being forgotten that you carry a compact in your pocket—or are you just happy to see…
…see, what a coward you have always been, old friend, to be laid low before the looking glass,
lost in what it's darkly drawn. you are only as real as you can force the world around you to be fake
and you wonder why the only way you can stand to face yourself and recite one measly fucking poem
is if you speak it in the second person, like you’re telling someone else's story.