𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗬: “The Mirror’s Reflection Can Never Be Mine” by Mary Elizabeth D. Luzon

Cartoon by: Mary Elizabeth D. Luzon

Published by: John Kurt Gabriel Reyes

Date Published: October 30, 2023

Time Published: 6:27 PM

Category: Prose

Theme: Seeing the ideal/real you makes you see the difference from the “you” that you present yourself as.

I can never look in the mirror again.

I can’t.

I’ve seen, I’ve felt, I’ve memorised my own face from the point of my jaw and to the veil of flesh atop my eyes. I know what it is and I tell myself that it would never change until I, myself, had plucked a blade and started to tear starting from the holes of my pores.

I know it.

I know my face.

I didn’t need to remember as it is mine— mine, mine, mine, mine.

But I do see. The corners of my eyes protrude more flesh, my hair shaped too oddly, the gash on my neck out of place, and my mouth full of canine teeth.

Slowly, inching just, little by little, my pupils dilate. I don’t see a soul inside. I looked into my eyes and it was black.

Void.

Empty.

The mirror doesn’t show me the blues and the green that swirl inside of them because they are not mine, mine, mine!

They are not mine.

But why? But why was it’s face mine and why is mine has never felt like my own?
I can’t look into the mirror because it’s the only thing I can do. Because my skin- my real skin- is plastic.

It’s all plastic.

Flat. Dull. Paper like.

But the mirror is too real.

The flesh is too bloody when mine is just paint and the eye’s flesh is too soft when mine feels so rough.

So it isn’t mine. I do yearn it to be mine. But it isn’t. It really isn’t.

I can never look into the mirror because if I do, I would cut myself trying to reach and wear my reflection’s skin.