Reflection

Who are you? Who am I?

All my life, I was told how I was like you. I saw little similarity, but suffered the speakers patiently, as one would children who believe their thoughts are original.

My clothes are styled exactly like yours. Our mother brushes our hair into the same bouncing hairstyle. We even tie our shoes the same way.

Yet I see how your clothes are red and white, while mine are blue and black. How your hair parts on the line, and mine fights until Mother imprisons it with gel. I tie my left shoe first, but you tie the right.

In my mind, our differences are so fundamentally evident that to compare us was to compare you to the moon, or myself to the sun.

The day came when I felt a shift so small I barely grasped it, like pinching the tail of a fleeing mouse. I looked at you, and I saw myself. You were the original, the copy, the joke, and the bleak reality.

I shattered the mirror. Blood trickling from my fingers and heart, I turned away from you, and embraced my cold, lonely eternity.

8/7/2010