In silence.
The kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty, only occupied.
In skin that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
Because now I know what it is. Not just a mirror. Not just a symbol. Not just some old object he took to prove a point. It’s a recording. Not of sound. Not of image. Of something quieter.
Of me.
The version of me I didn’t know he’d already touched.
The version of me that still believed I was alone in the room when I cried on the floor and told myself I was fine. When I bent over the sink brushing my teeth in nothing but a T-shirt and an open wound. When I looked myself in the eye and saidyou’resafe now, over and over, like it would become true if I just said it with enough certainty.
That was never safety. It was rehearsal.
He kept that.
That girl.
That lie.
And now he’s given it back, polished and boxed, like a gift I never wanted, like a prophecy I already lived through without knowing I was being watched the entire time.
I touch the surface of the mirror again.
It’s cold.
Cold in the way truth is cold—unconcerned with comfort, uninterested in mercy.
It always is.
It never reflects what I expect.
And today… I see something new.
Not just exhaustion.
Not just fear.
Not just that haunted shine in my eyes I’ve been trying to blink away since I first sat in that fucking velvet booth.
I see hunger.
It sits there quietly, patient, undemanding, like it knows I’ll come to it eventually.
Not the kind you feed.
The kind you starve. The kind you bury. The kind you lie about even to yourself.
I don’t want to want him.
But I do.
And it’s not because he’s beautiful.
It’s not because he said my name like it already belonged to him.
It’s not even because of the way my thighs clench when I remember the sound of his voice.
