The Broken Woman

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. There on my knees, on the ground, as I stared into the largest of the glass shards, and it was not me. I was not myself. When I looked back down at the girl in the largest of the mirror’s shards, it seems more of the idea of who I was, but surely not who I am.

There is pain that stretches across my extremities, which I know without looking, emanates from the piece of the mirror the size of my own hand which grips it. I take a shallow breath and have the strength to look up and see more fragments about the floor and the room itself which seem to follow the meandering footprints and droplets of the red and viscous pools into the darkness of the hallway.

I make the first attempt to stand but pain shoots through both my kneecaps and I wince. When my eyes open, I look into a smaller fragment a foot or so away from face. The dust at the edges of the larger piece shine like diamonds as I kneel over the remains of the mirror in a pool of my own blood. It is me, an infant in swaddling clothes, my eyes pure and innocent until they close. I look away and so does she.

The reflection in one small fragment of glass shows the smile of a girl that I was, no more than the age of five or six, and she smiles as though the pain of the world is foreign in thought or deed. But as quickly as I think to look away and the smile is stolen by a boy in the shadows that becomes a man in the light.

In yet another fragment, I and she, is ten and we scream silently but violently, and we fight with all our might, and I close my eyes and cry out to no answer except the morbid silence that forces me to lift my eyelids again and the shards across the dark space, small and large still clinging together to form a most unholy assemblage, the shards threaten and beckons. Get up and move forth. There is work to do girl.

And a thumping sound from the darkness of the hallway steals our thoughts. Something or someone just ran in time with my own quickening heartbeat.

In the fractured glass just below my chin, is a girl of fifteen years and fresh off the vessel. My lip bleeds and my eyes stare into a dark void. Behind me is the bluish-purple face and the clawed eyes of the one who kept the furnace for the voyage to the new world. He won't come for me again.

The reflection in the fractured glass just above the temple now and my heart starts to race as I run down the stairs older now, no longer a girl. A young woman who fights to be heard, to be seen. But still only seen as a thing to conquer. I raise my hands to my face and my fingernails like talons dig into the flesh of the thing which would consume me. I turn away.

I drop the glass from my right hand but not before one last glimpse at the woman staring back. She has fought off a thing in the shadows. Her eyes are full of rage. She is vengeful and the pain has begun to feed her. The beating of her heart and the throb of the pain nourishes more than hurts.

In the hallway, faced with the darkness now. I brought myself to my feet and feel the streams of blood as they inch and itch their way down the skin of my legs. I lumber forward and know I have two hands and still only one is free.

My mind races in the darkness, and I call upon a certain vigor to look up and move forward through more shards of glass. All distorted images of my own reflections, more fragments which lead into the darkness of the hallway. The vigor and resolve grow, fed by fear. But the fear is not my own. A bit of light comes from the room at the end of the hallway. And the shadow from which I feel the emanating fears moves again.

I feel there is no time to waste and as I enter the hallway and there at the door opposite is a figure of a man. He slumps against the door and between the blades of his shoulder is another piece of the mirror and in its reflection, I am there, but it is not me. I grow larger, closer, and in a moment, it is that same reflection that digs the glass into him until he cries out. I mimic his terse yelp only my voice is deeper and from own throat sounds as though it is not who I am but I have become. A roar from the woman I am as I hear the demulcent death rattle of the man he was.