Dear Vanity Mirror,
tonight you stood by while i got ready. you watched me swipe my eyes with magnetic black ink, and gingerly place false eyelashes across my lids. Then I traced my lips to the exact line separating my lip skin from my face skin and you shined a light on my drawing.
i turn you on with the click of a button and you brightly show me my flaws and how i may improve with this color, that ink.
tonight i wasn't focused on the size of my pores nor their contents, i didn't look for my pores much at all. No, tonight i was focused on the expertise of which I traced the lines of my face.
Today was different among the near but nothing special among the many. Today, when i saw my face, I heard the words i'd only had to hear once.
You can never predict when you'll hear those kinds of words, the ones that you can never get to go away, but it's not the before that matters, it's the after.
The after was about what i saw in you, Vanity Mirror.
After i heard the words, "you have a good face," well, it's probably not what you'd guess.
Among those words spoken were hundreds of unspoken words;
you have a good face, but
you're not pretty.
you have a good face, but
what about your hair?
When i heard the words, "what would you look like with straight blonde hair?", you turned on me, Vanity Mirror. You turned on me.
I think the funny thing about words, is that they usually accompany the eyes. They say eyes and ears together so often because they're two in the same.
They say, "what would you look like with straight blonde hair?", and they mean, 'i'd like you better that way,' 'you're not enough right now,' 'right now, you're ugly'.
Would they call me ugly if they could feel these curls? How soft and healthy they are.
Would they tell me to change it if they could feel the strength of the strands, untouched since their emergence from my head?
What if the touch of finger tips could accompany those eyes and ears? Would they know the truth then? Would they see that I am not ugly when I support the keratin of my DNA, or that, in fact, alterations hinder the experience of feeling?
You're just a mirror. And I could never expect you to reach beyond the experience of sight, but, you didn't have to turn on me the way that you did.
I still suffer when I see you. I'm not sure when the day will be when I don't suffer.
So while I prepare myself for unknown eyes, and I finish tracing the lines of my face only to crawl into bed, well.
I blame you for that destination, Vanity Mirror. I blame you for my empty message boxes and strained conversations, and do you know why, Vanity Mirror? Because you've become the Tsar of my aspirations, ever since I heard the words, "You are beautiful," in place of, "You are valued."
You are everything and you tell me I am nothing.
I really wish you were just a mirror, Vanity Mirror.
Why can't you just leave me alone?
Sincerely,
Yours Truly
YOU ARE READING
Yours Truly
PoetryYou want to hear the truth? You want the truth even if it scrapes against your skin and yanks your teeth out? Do you? Do you wish to? I could give it to you, I could tell you what I'm really thinking under these voluminous curls. But that isn't qui...
