Peering through me

I live on the street the alley cats avoid and the trees lean their leafy branches obscuring my hollow hole of a mailbox. This is Luxembourg, a land of priceless Renaissance architecture, and unfathomable prizes nature behold. Every winter season the snow falls, sprinkling every European mountain peak and the headstones to the centuries-old graveyards and Catholic chapels, but I’m spared from it all, behind these windows I’m a prisoner of a prissy, darling, icing-on-the-cake reality. I have soured into a miserable witch, dreaming about the day I have the strength to run far away maybe to the Motherland of Belgium. But in the meantime, I take a long stare at the face through the vanity mirror and turn back down to my blank sketchbook paper. I started this dance countless weeks ago, trying to illustrate the human portrait, but I occupy the version nobody else seems to recognize. I don’t understand what makes an Image so exceptional. Now my bedroom is tinted with the outside darkness. It must be late in the night now, but I still haven't even marked anything down. My utensil is a chunk of black chalk, I could start with a simple jaw, leading to my cheekbones, then my forehead, and the start of my hairline. But I look up again, and that’s when I peer through the little girl, watching back at me. This young girl has creamy blonde curls and the glassiest of viridescent eyes like two Chrysoberyl crystals. Her skin appears smooth like fresh linen, tinted a fair peach I think this girl is far prettier than me and I wonder the last time I’ve seen her like this. I snarl my teeth, dragging a finger across my throat to put her back in that frame capturing her so she shrinks with fear. I focus now, etching the point of my chalk and smudging along the way, I like to see her timid, brows raised and lips tight. I used to pinch this girl until she bled and wind her around to the point of hysteria, and now I commit even worse, but she’s just the result of my sight cast on that glass. When the sun rises, I have more than an outline but when I glance back at her she’s distracted by the morning gleam and I hate how the corners of her mouth rise, reminding me she’s the hopeful one. My bedroom is illuminated by this light, my milky pink wallpaper, ceramic baby dolls, and wooly white rabbits propped along my shelf. But my vanity mirror reveals the princess of my kingdom where I’m her queen. If she’s lucky enough I'll feed her well tonight, with the stickiest apple bread and the thickest honeycomb pudding to keep her throat full so I don’t have to hear her wailing and wallowing. Every time I stuff my beast of a belly to the brim, I pray she chokes. I used to wonder What went wrong with me. And Why do I neglect this girl of the humanity her eyes crave? But I watch her veins pulsate each time I let the ink leak into the tunnels traveling through the body we share. I laugh each time she whimpers at the impact of these penetrations, the dark solutes that taint her pure figure. The next day arrives and I carve apotropaic symbols to keep my evils at bay but the itches only swell and I must keep gutting this fish. The young girl in the mirror only exists in her portal to her rotting wicked world I trap her in, the interior chemtrails eating her. When the moonlight beams through my curtains I scratch my last details on the sketch paper and when I’m finally through I dip my body into my feathery fortress of fluffy fleece pillows and frown at my ultimate product, but I hesitate to name this Beautiful. Her new face is mildly concentrated with concern, brows furrowed, the surface blushed with soft brightness, but the expression torments me the longer I reflect on it, so I turn my chin up once more to see her there in that vanity mirror, Her jaw is sharp, skin thinner than cheap cloth and her eye sockets seep deep in, sinking the center of her expression to a sickly tart scowl, not like she’s angry but like her precious existence is threatened to decay just where she is, She’s destined to die by my hands. I grin at this sight, I smile so wide my cheeks cramp up and a tear falls from me. The once young and alluring sight of her is entirely dampened and decayed beyond recognition, her mouth is wide, eaten away by the blowflies and moths that nibble at her, like an abscess that never concludes, her eyes are dark, no sight to be traced, puss oozing down the bones outlining the husk of what used to house her absent soul, there is no hair attached to the top of her any longer, but burnt fuzz on the skull. If this sketch is accepted by the deities, I will be liberated for the first time. I can implode that vanity mirror on the dresser and leave, I can take a step again and again down that long carpeted hall and petal down those stairs as fast as I want, and then open that front door, fling that gate wide and smell that clean tree sap and autumn winds, listen to the crows chirp and breath up and down. Now that this girl is diminished from me, all of my responsibilities and obligations are released. I’ve paid all of my debts. I pull some lacy white socks on, stretch the better parts of my legs, and stand there, staring at this vanity from an absent-minded lens. Her neck snaps pathetically and the weight of the skull tumbles down, thumping at the old wooden floor and shattering, the cavity of her neck bleeds a dark oil that emits a foul chalky gas. I gag at the sight of her, my gut folds at the harsh displeasure of witnessing her. I step over these dry remains and make my way to the exit. With my new youthful shine, I triumph down the stuffy atmosphere of the house interiors, falling deeper in love with myself along the way. I march out towards the landscape I’ve wished to greet, wandering through the snowbanks that blanket my vast front yard. I venture down into the canopy of the Bambësch Forest but a new sense creeps up from the soles of my feet to the base of my spine and the cavity of my temples that I’m entirely alone, I look ahead and for the next days, I see no other live being. All is silent and it irks me, even when I sink my exhausted weight into the soil along the trail, listening to the chorus of waterfall, that runs the creek. I don’t even remember the last time I heard a frog croak or a pigeon caw. My misery depended on the company of the young girl in that vanity mirror and now I’m fated to a life of solitude. I peer my sight to the pure clarity of the creek, piercing right through me are those two Chrysoberyl crystals for eyes, creamy blond curls coated by snowflakes, and my skin like fresh linen. I’ve been unaccompanied since my first breath on the day of my birth till my last.