"I remember seeing my face for the first tyme. There is a sensation to looking in the mirror and not knowing who's looking back at you. The reciprocating blinks of the strange green eyes seem like coincidence until you touch the bruise below and wince at your own pain.
The woman next to me looked unsure at me as she washed her hands purposefully quick and left without drying them. Her reaction to me was so startling. Was I something harsh to look at? Casual glances had never brought such a feeling of uneasiness.
I stepped back against the off-white tiling. It had been white once, when the bathroom was new. Now the fluorescent lights seemed to enhance the yellow tinge of decay that crept around the edges of the nondescript room.
The unnatural light draped down. It rolled across the form of my face, dancing on ridges and slinky away from the recesses, finally mingling with the blues and greys of my tender cheek. Light glided down dark hair that flowed over the shoulders of a maroon sweatshirt. I wore no jewelry on my hands, nothing to comfort them but the holes torn in the sweatshirt to stick my thumbs through.
There was a knock at the door. The sort of soft rapping of someone that feels they are intruding.
"Am?"
"I'll be there in a second."
I knew who it was. I knew who I was told I was. There were reactions and circumstances that created individuality. This was a natural law of psychology. But the face staring back at me was a textbook format, not a personal experience. I was not Amnesty Jenks that loved to dance around her room the silly songs her mother would sing while she did dishes. But I remember so vividly I would grab her pant leg and beg her never to stop.
I'd known who I was. I knew it yesterday. Now everything's so different.
Noel didn't wait for me to finish my thoughts to walk into the bathroom. Sure, it was a woman's bathroom. That didn't intimidate him. Then again, why should it?
"Taking a bit longer than usual to powder that nose?" He smirked and learned up against the hand towel dispenser. I laughed at him as it popped off the wall and on to the floor. "Crazy thing!" He jumped back. "Girl, let's get out of here before the place falls in." A goofy curve drew across his lips that made me bite my tongue on any note of chastisement and just follow him out laughing.
gloomsugarcookie: The streets were wet from the recent rain. It never sprinkled here. If you wanted to enjoy the show, you got the full experience. Noel twisted and pivoted across the puddles, dancing in the streetlamp light for the benefit of no one but himself. This was our home, out here in the lamplight. If you can't dance in your home, where can you? It's not that we're bad people. This is just the way things worked out.
If a home is somewhere you can always go and feel safe maybe we never had one to begin with. Remembering the bruise was almost as bad as the sting when it started to swell. There's a part of you that never wants to let go of the crayon pictures you draw for the fridge when you're little; the ones where Mommy and Daddy have big purple smiles that'll last forever. There's a part of you that wants to go back. The TV was on so loud I hurt my ears. In the dim lighting, smoke swirled. My father stood in the doorway. The names he called me and the smell of his breath when he moved just inches away cut into my stomach with a jagged feel of nausea that faintly resembled pain. When he hit me, I laid on the floor for a moment, looking up to the stairwell where my sister hid. We had woken her with our screams and I suddenly more sorrowful for that than anything else. The bruises weren't new, but the feeling of guilt was when I left without her." Kit (Jamie) Walburn ©