Soot Black

I looked into the mirror and did not believe

That this was actually me

Just a heavy black cloud with teardrops for eye sockets, pouring down my chin

The rolls of misery drip drip drip drip

Mascara streaks, not streaking, no, but eating

Eating my cheeks once so perfectly dabbed with rosy blush

Eating them away like acid,

Soot

Black

Puffy eyes so sad

So miserable

So

Monstrous.

Is this actually me or is this some fictional creature in a dream? Like a ghost from the Shining like the dead woman from room 217 like a death eater swallowing souls of the innocent like an undead soldier

Like

Death.

Is it possible to look like death? Because that is what I saw.

If death had a face, it would be that of mine in that polished mirror with the mint green walls on the sides and water on the countertops drowning my textbooks, drowning my sorrow, spilling onto the floor and just pure misery etched into every crevice of my face, every pimple like a canyon of brutal ugliness, every wrinkle just digging deep into my skin, just a wreck, just a mess, just a monster.

A monster with an artificial orange flower in her hair and a few locks of blonde in front of those sad sad eyes and the ivory skin of the face just turned black with a dress on her shoulders, but she’s not really wearing it, it clings onto her as a last breath…of sanity?

Without the dress and the flowers on the beige trimming, without the stockings pulled high and the shoes in place, she is a monster, a naked monster hunched on the floor, on the gray floor with the water flooding the room and the mint green walls standing there still.

Ashamed of what? Sad about what?

As mother would say in Haiti they actually have something to be justifiably sad about but I’m here, she’s here, we? Are here as one, me and the girl/monster in the mirror that is not me, that is sad, that is old and dying and weak that does not have the appearance of a fresh college student ready to explore life, but decaying and just

All

Black.