"Hello, stranger", I say to myself some mornings, in the wide blurry mirror. The mornings in which I wake up to the smoky, suffocating, scent of my own dew. Filling the bed sheets where I slept skinny the night before. The mornings where I look at myself in that blurry musty mirror, on all fours, growling and murmuring "sweet girl, sweet girl", tracing the sickly and elegant curve of my own back. How my back curves in the same way ribs do, run a finger across them. Hair in a ponytail as I swing it around the side of my shoulder and pretend to tie a cherry stem between strawberry-cracked lips. "Your skin looks good today, Daffodil. You don't need to smile for anybody. Not anybody, no, maybe though, just a smirk - yes like that - and, wait, show them how your hips swing back. Chest down. Like a cat. See, you're a natural." Maybe it's that the sun is still low on those drippy pre-mornings, she's my voyeur and I'm her mouth. Maybe its that I'm more beautiful with weak eyes, maybe that the whispers of an unsung voice are less harmonious and that command makes me want to retire to myself. But some mornings, that are dewy, my body is softly speckled on the shadow in the wall, faded in the mirror, and it's like neither of us were ever supposed to see each other. Sometimes, I say "Hello, stranger" and the statuesque I am is glad to be let out.
How often, I wonder, are people shy of themselves? How long does it take to acquaint the outer with the inner, if possible at all. And if it is, how can I resolve two minds of one body into one mind of one body. I feel, at times, I am a we. And we are not twins. The I of the we, the one that is out in full, is older but wide eyed. Bushy tailed. Tall and baby faced and buttoned up. Quiet, too. Loves baking and being hugged. Enjoys monogamy. She isn't, oh, I. I am not any sort of prude, not really. Because I cannot stop the her of the we of me from hanging out. I would be lying if I said I didn't like when my skirt is just a little too short, or that I didn't like when the girl next to me is wearing a skirt just a little too short. But that's the hanging bit, like a hang nail or a door that doesnt close right. Like a tap that drips.
She, too, is buttoned up. But confidently so, and younger, tauter. A few buttons down from the collar, everything tight at the hips. But she isn't aesthetically-bound. Her mind is a home to the dirtydirty. She thinks dirty things when she is alone. About the house she's building, the blood running down her leg, how close the heel of her shoe was to the boy's eye as she stopped his bored pursuit. About the kitchen counter or the back of the barn. Loved and feared, my terrific heart breaker and house-burner. A hypnotic snake charmer at six feet tall - don't stare too long, she'll turn you. On the street she is speaking the body language of a road running heiress, flustered just enough in mind and body to be adorable and self sufficient. When she frowns it is only to look you in the eye, to make you touch her. I swear, she has fangs. And I want them to unsew my skin into threads and turn them into rope, tie the hands my we's "I" to the backboard and leave her there to hang. She is not afraid of success.
The truth is, unsettling to believe from a person who is split and splitting, that the she of we of me is embarrassing. God in hell, she is fantastic. Spindle-whip hair grabber, quick and piercing tongue, get on your knees and pray at her navel - she is a natural heaven lower-er and sometimes even I am entranced she lives in here with me. But still, I am embarrassed of we, I, me, constantly. Maybe if my eyes stayed blurry, if the set never truly came up, if I dust-bunnied the mirror like religion. Maybe if I never got water retention, if I wasn't afraid of what I looked like naked. I could love her. And she could stop begging me for release, to let her skinny and plat.
