High on the white bookshelf beside my desk, I keep all of my odd objects, knick-knacks, possessions I've collected from a hazy somehow and someplace in the indistinct, illusive past- it slips through my outstretched fingers every time I reach for it. They serve no true purpose but stand as proof that I have lived. I existed here. That I am not just a nameless, faceless cog in the wheel, another drop in the ocean. Perhaps the most functionless, earnest and 3-Dimensional of this impressive accumulation is a hand-mirror. Pink and plastic, its foggy, smudged face is like a curtain. On days when I see no end ahead I pick it up and unsheath it- like a shining, sturdy shield- from its purple hand-stitched fabric holder. There are a pair of curious, perched rabbits, one on either side, their considering gaze painted by rose-coloured thread across their full moon faces. Carefully, I pull aside the translucent, dust-coloured curtain, which brushes against my palm light as air, and step inside the world behind the curtain, and draw it shut behind me.
The smell of the night market comes back first, the all-round tinkling and clattering and bustling and hollering and sizzling, stitched together as well by the smell of fresh meat cooking in heavy spice, neon blinking lights, and ruby red lanterns dangling from every storefront- I see it all with my eyes tightly closed, mirror tightly held. It was the first fall of snow that year, yet the most evident and comforting part of the mirror-world was the warmth of my mother's hand, gently pulling me along by mine, and my other held by my father. I could not describe the feeling that I remember it by, a child bundled up in winter coats and fed on warm food, rather the texture of the firm cotton coat, the way the fluffy mufflers clung to my ears and a kind of untroubled tiredness in my legs- how the old woman's hands were filled with a latticework of greyish-beige wrinkles and dotted with age, a raspy, mirthful voice coming from a now out-of-focus face as her hands passed my mirror over the inviting storefront into my mother's, and how my eyes clung to the tiny, pretty, shiny thing in my hand, which was entirely mine.
However I never stay long behind the curtain in my mirror. Maybe it's because of the way my heart tugs at my chest, every time I linger there quietly behind a veil, watching a peaceful, happy snow globe frozen in the few perfect seconds before it is overturned; maybe it's because of the inexplicable feeling of loss now that I know I can never ever go back to a time where the whole world was wrapped in the same pretty, childlike glow; or perhaps it's simply because when I open my eyes and look in the cheap plastic hand-mirror, the faraway memory of my own family, whole and happy and complete,
disappears.
- girl and her pencil
YOU ARE READING
midnight rain | ₐ bₒₒₖ ₒf ₚₒₑₘₛ
Poesía"i try so hard to help other people because i have no idea how to help myself" things will get better let beautiful, painful flowers grow from the places where you wept
