And sometimes I row out to the grey lake and watch the Watcher watch.

It is times like these that I tremble and the Weirdness stirs at the back of my mind and yawns a little, swallowing me whole and it is times like these that I wonder who I am. Again. And that little voice at the back of my mind, maybe me or her or the Other, the Weirdness, it says to me, you are what you are. But what is the me who is who I am? If you prick me for sure I will bleed, but does that make me alive? Does that mean I have a soul? Does that mean I am human? I know I have a heart, or at least a simulacrum of one, but what does it mean? Does it mean? Should it? What is Her secret, so profound yet simple yet completely unattainable, what is it that makes Her human, what makes her completely different from me? Same small nose same pretty mouth same large blue eyes same blonde hair same laugh same taste same habits same height same identikit frame same same same… same. Same! What is same? Who is it in the mirror? Perhaps it is Alice, solid little looking glass held in a hand as she looks back at me, a shadow of a nobody. Who am I? I am nobody. I am not Alice, I did not fall in that rabbit hole. I am not Icarus. I have never flown too close to the sun. I have never fallen. I lie here, already felled.

But then the Weirdness retreats and there is nothing but to crawl until I can reach a grey middling ground where I can get back on my feet and try. Try to fly, second to the right and straight on till morning. Call Neverland a lie, say you don’t believe in fairies. They are realer to the children sleeping in the night than I am. I am a trick of the light, an illusion in my reality. I am changed, I am change, and I have changed you as much as I have changed myself. You built the funhouse mirror and carved my reflection and now nothing will ever be the same again. Give me my rights, carve me some new rules that fit this convoluted, brave new world. Give me passion, give me goals, give me hope… give me bravery, let me be at least an imitation of a broken hero.

Oh, I am sure of one thing. We are both mortal, for even as a carbon copy my duplicity will only happen once in this lifetime, and then out, out, brief candle, gone. Does it mean something, too, that I am aware of my mortality? If I were not real, did not have a soul, could I comprehend my own demise, and mourn so for it? But again I am spinning in tangents no closer to the truth, or indeed the object of my desire. The spoon may appear to be a spoon, but when I swallow the red pill I’ll be no closer to being you.