the girl in the mirror’s name is the same
skylark
that hopeful whisper of freedom from a widower’s wife
a quixotic dreamer
a thrower of message-stuffed bottles into the sea
with the type of laugh that left wildflowers in its wake
i am told.
her face i can no longer remember
her memory feels cold like a stranger
or colder, a myth
a legend
something that was never real at all.
and yet, i am here.
my mother’s warmth, i think, was weaved into my flesh when i was part of her
when her love was my little globe, my tiny earth
and her lungs breathed for me and
her heart beat for me
as my fingers unwebbed and my eyes opened to gaze upon
the firmament inside her womb.
the weight, i think, is only the physical manifestation of my loss.
as i felt estranged from my world
i became withdrawn and overcast.
and as i became wan and gray
my stilly sunny friends slowly peeled away
petals falling from daisies
loved me not.
i felt alone and that was when he descended upon me.
i just wanted a friend.
i let him loop his arm through mine
my bird leg with its stabbing beak elbow and talon wristbones
i know i should just fly away
i know that if i am a skylark
he is nothing more than icarus
but my wings were inundated under the monsoon moon that seemed
to downpour on my cellophane heart.
the rain seemed to melt away my paper doll body
pound by pound and piece by piece;
the wet sopping edges dissolved
all i can hope is my centre
is made of something stronger than wafery notebook pages.
he walks with me; i frown when his fingers graze my hipbones
which i cannot help feel are gargoyles
on what has become an austere and gothic masonry of a body.
he tells me i am skinny
i think it’s supposed to be congratulatory
a compliment
some mark of worthiness or sublimity manifested in my body.
but really,
it just further curdles
my twisted insides
that he thinks
this weight
i have lost
is for
him.
my throat catches when i try to make a sound in response
i am the earth in winter
feeling myself wither.
that rosebud you once picked is wilting
i feel i am growing very old, fragile butterfly wings have replaced
what once was the flapping muscular corpuscle that carried me high above this world
and touched the sun.
i have never chosen not to eat
my stomach must have buried itself too
when the rest of my viscera froze itself to stop from feeling.
numbness was better.
i try to call her name, my hunger
for life
for sustenance
she is lost.
my stomach is balled up in a fetal position under a desk bracing itself
from the tremors that my fragile femurs violently shake
as even a single step on thick carpet
is an earthquake to my frail body.
…
when he introduces me to his friends for the first time
it doesn’t feel like a warm invitation to be embroidered into the fabric of his life.
it feels like a trunk show.
i am on display
a prized object.
he feels proud to have something with qualities that others find desirable
“she’s so fine” i hear one say when i have left the stifling den
to perch on the side of a bathtub and stare into my reflection in the waterspotted mirror.
he doesn’t knock his friend for commenting about my appearance
he says
“i know”
gratified
he exalts in his accomplishment
a “pretty” girlfriend
pretty is a word for
things
i feel reduced
even thinner
if it were possible.
i feel like less.
his voice oozes arrogance
he attributes his accomplishment
to some singularly irresistible virility possessed of him alone
so cloyingly strong
so overwhelmingly powerful
that this helpless damsel was completely overcome,
rendered impotent at the behest of her all-consuming desire.
i honestly hate it
but my wings don’t seem to remember
how to fly
my heart doesn’t remember what it is
to be free.
i am trying to gain the strength
to be greater than i have been;
i am the earth
that winter wrought barren
praying for flesh to grow once again on the bone mountains
that once sang songs and bore a thousand dreams
flora and fauna.
i look myself in the eye in the mirror
i am skylark
my wings know drowning
i have felt the hibernating death of my spirit’s winter
but i will know spring again.
i will gain weight, i will grow like the universe and its winking stars
nothing is ever the same in this world.
i will rise once more
i will fly.