When I see myself, I see a little girl
shattered, broken glass.
I've collected a jar of broken glass. As I cleaned the pieces, I felt a strange kinship, as if they were a part of me. Indeed they are, just not yet embedded under my skin.
That's what I feel when I hold my face in my hands, though it's soft and warm with the lively blood that reddens my cheeks in a constant blush.
Shards of broken glass.
Or maybe I just can't get the image of something so cold, hard, and unforgiving piercing through the tender flesh out of my own subconscious. It sounds morbid, I know, but somehow entrancing.
When I see myself, I see a little girl
drowning in omnipresent, crashing waves.
I don't remember when I first was afraid of the water. It's been at least three or four years, and I now achingly remember the times when I was pulled under or overtaken. Hawaii, two years ago, was the last time I remember swimming in the ocean. I was out deeper than I'd usually be, up to maybe my waist, hopping waves so they would carry me with them for a short moment. I felt the tide receding too much and watched as a bigger wave prepared to hone in on me.
I ran.
But being small and weak and waist-deep in water sucking in, I couldn't get far.
The wave swallowed me, a horrifying account on my part, and I couldn't get my feet on the sandy floor of the ocean. I was scared. All I could hear was the rushing of my limbs and flow of the water. Only tasted salt and poisonous blankness. Can't smell. Can't feel. Can't hardly see. I struggled to meet with the bottom, so I could push up my face into the warm and safe air. After several seconds that felt like minutes to me, I broke out into the sunlight again.
After moments like this one, I usually cough and gasp and hold back the tears because I know that being afraid of the water is being afraid of everything.
It's a liquid of life. It bends and sprays and is beautiful. It is entirely good and entirely evil.
I love it. It's terrifies me.
Isn't it fitting, then, that his name literally means "flood"?
When I see myself, I see red.
My heart was different from the start. The defect stole oxygen from me, and I turned blue. The heart and blood are life to me. Everything finds its way into becoming symbolic for me, largely from recurrent happenings strung together by one emotion and one other aspect.
Red is deep. Red is pain. Red is soul. In a way, the sum of red's parts is passion.
It can be anything from a fragrant rose to a fiery blaze, a volcano's fury to the subtle sunrise. Red can be beautiful, but red can be flaming anguish.
I radiate red.
The little girl is me. She doesn't want to be a woman someday, it just seems so... Ripened, full, ready. The daddy is the one that gives you away, right? He's supposed to be the one that wishes you wouldn't grow up. That's your anchor. But if I don't have an anchor, I'd rather be a ball of lead that a ship at sea. This sea is impurity. Why would I want to drift there?
I don't want to have what the other girls want. I do not wait for a prince, I lock my doors because I know the only thing coming is the wildlife to stir up dust in the yard. I don't wish to have a family, I'll live and die a virgin happily. It seems sick. I don't wish to seduce, I wish to enchant. Not to rule, but to grace. I'm totally content with living the way Cinderella did BEFORE the ball. So I'll stay locked up, pure and cold, useless but kind.
When I see myself, I see the girl in the storybooks that picks the flowers and puts them in her hair, held back in smooth bounds of curls. The dew dampens the hem of her sundress and the big eyes are the only dark thing on her. The skin a smooth milk-pale warmth resonating in nearby air, and freckles dancing about the cheekbones.
What does it matter if I don't match the appearance? You know the girl I mean. And I wish to stay her if I cannot be like the other girls, if I cannot be useful.
