The Mirror Demon

Congealed images of self loathing overtake me, the past is not too far behind. I run, walk, crawl and finally I succumb. Those chains are heavy and hard to pull, they hang like golden plaits off my head, expectant and fearful of the damned prince who might climb up them and in return make me lose my head. The future is like that prince daring, dashing and full of hope, climbing from the mists of nowhere to save me from this prison I have built for myself: my past.

One brick at a time, with the solid I destroy the real. I build the walls, the stairs, even the bars that imprison me. Layer after layer burying what I cannot understand, what I cannot control. I wave goodbye to the demons, better six feet under than waging war against me, right? No! From below they have made my tenuous little world tremble. It seems I am attempting to walk a tight rope in the darkest of nights. Unwilling to stand still but fearful of the unknown, of the unseen, of what lurks behind smiles, words. No point staying in a crumbling world, unable to escape the prison I have built. And in the darkness all that is visible is my other self, the mirror demon, the one I could not bury. It shines bright on my dreams, like a prophecy, showing me the past and all I can see is the future. Trapped in fear, all the other demons were fictions, frozen ghosts of other versions of me. These fictions have collapsed my world, and now they cloud me in fear, they are my jailers.

In the depths of all that shines, I find the strength to pull away, their grasp thickens, it claws into my skin, it makes me bleed. The pain blinds me but with the blood the fear goes away, those demons can take my clothes, my skin, even blood but now that the fear is gone, the darkness lifts. In the light the mirror becomes me, it goes through me, into me, to a new world. And I become the mirror, the lightness dispels the illusion and the space between the mirrored image and myself disappears, the demon is me, I am her, darkness saw us separate, incoherent, mute. With light we speak as one, we write, we breath; no space, no loneliness, no prisons. No longer restricted by the limits of one...