When I look in the mirror I do not see a writer. I see … I see, an alien? Maybe when I turn out the lights, Bloody Mary, stepping out of the mirror if I’m still actin like a scared kid.
When I look in the mirror, I think of an ocean of sand, and an angry bolt of lightning that strikes it and makes glass.
I am a story collector. When I look in the mirror, I think I am looking at sand, as I traverse the desert with my staff. I tell my stories, and when I run out of those, I tell other people’s stories. I say, can you believe …? Sometimes I omit the name if the story is folk, a parable. I look in the mirror and I don’t see a person full of stories, but I straighten my hair, wash my face, brush my teeth and wonder when I will run out of them.
When will I start repeating the same story? Like I’m old. The story looping back, closing itself, The End. I’m ecstatic anew to tell it like it’s the first time while other’s eyes imperceptibly roll back in their heads, annoyed, dead, no tired, sleeping, sleeping …
I’m awake, I’m awake, in the mirror. I close the mirror on the medicine cabinet and sit in front of my computer. I pick up a pen, lift up my shaky finger to write, and I write, I write about myself, what I see, what I see, in the mirror,
I wonder how can I write anything when nothing happened the way I remembered. I tell my storythenItellsomeoneelse’sstory, like taking the arms off a Barbie and putting it as her leg. I tell my story and someone stops me and says, that only happened in a photograph. Like picking up broken shards of glass from the frame. My shoes are heavy with sand. My mouth is dry, I cover my eyes from the flash and ask for some water. this is fine, I say, I can tell my story better like this then. It all began with Bloody Mary and how that story scared us all away from the mirror … and when I open my eyes again, my voice is gone. I am finished writing. My eyes are white.
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