18 August 2012
She saw her face on the window pane, faded, ghostly. If she focused hard enough, she could see the outside world, frosted, dark grey and raining smoke orange leaves. Her eyed stared back at her. She had always hated her eyes, too small and too far apart. Slowly, she reached out towards the pane and struck it with her knuckles. The area around them cracked and she reached out her hands to remove the ethereal shard. Again, she broke off and slipped out the glass in front of where her other eye reflected. Now that she couldn't see them, she felt as though she didn't have them, that she had wide, bright blue eyes, instead of her slanted, frog green ones of before. Then, she moved down to the lips. It was something about their positioning on her face that she hated. Once more, she removed them from her reflection. At this point, she became ecstatic, she could almost feel her lips, they were perfect, just like her eyes. Next, she tore out her oddly shaped nose from the pane and felt it almost shift into a different form. Feature after feature, her ears, her hair, her neck, she ripped from the reflection, one by one, until all that was left was a hole in the window. She felt different, she felt perfect and beautiful, because she couldn't see the truth. To her, the truth was ugly and she had destroyed it. The shards that made up her face were lying on the floor, shattered and broken. A gentle breeze blew a leaf towards her and she caught it in her hands. The dewdrops on its surface were just blurs of colour, but she looked into them, all she imagined they were were distortions of the truth she had created. But, they were just the truth of what she thought she had destroyed. She was beautiful, but only because there was no mirror to show her otherwise. Perception is everything.
Shards • Opuss № I