Mirror Image

Across the tight, coarse sheets they lay scattered. Innocently staring back at you in your foetal position against the plastic webbed, white lounger. Their colour, their pop so out of place in this room filled with cheap mosaics of views that are a mere hundred meters down the road. The dull beige walls cracked and chipped, lacking substance.

Walking towards the balcony you catch a glimpse, before hastily pushing through the reflection. You stand there as the wind bites and dances through your hair, momentarily lifting it off your face before you hurriedly pull it down. Your eyes flash across the periphery, taking in the bursts of colour and masses of skin baking on the sandbars below you.

You recall the suffocating haze of hairspray, the nauseating ethyl acetate and the constant white noise. You remember your mother’s shrill voice calling up the stairs for more curlers and fake lashes, greeting you at the stairs with a critical gaze before being engulfed by women in masks. Their voices hushed with heads bowed in your direction as they offer their condolences, with talk once more about the complete package.

Softly caressing your ear, its persistence increases. Fluttering across your eyelashes and barely grazing your lips. You can hear it whistling through the pines, tauntingly, as the briny air invades your senses, forcing you to look up, gulping. Incessant dots and stripes strike your eyes kaleidoscopically, before you retreat.

You resume your position against the lounger. Swallowed by the faded grey tones of your pullover, you run your fingers over the threadbare strands behind you and down the sides of your body. Your fingers stopping hesitantly by your pockets. Aware.

You find yourself in the bathroom, slick with sweat. You hurriedly remove your layers, fumbling with the buttons on your jeans and shakily removing the contents of your pockets. You line them up. Soldiers readied for battle as you sacrifice yourself.

It circulates and pulses around you, mingling with the sweat that races down your body. Your hair clings to your face as breathing becomes a burden. Coils of steam fabricate lazy shadows and your skin begins to retard. You’re acutely aware of the sting. Pinpricks of crimson begin to contrast the pale, while your fingers whisk over them heavily calloused. You shut it off suddenly. The cold. Harsh and unwelcome.

You roll it between your fingers. The faves of the ditzs. Feeling the promised euphoria, the effortless intimacy as you gaze down at the vivacious sensuality of the trademark. You gaze up at the mirror, steam shrouding its reflection as you swallow the little, pink, pill.

Your vision shifts. Shades of grey shatter into fragments of gold as your heart pummels effervescence through your blood stream. You can feel every synapse electrify as your hands dart across your face adding the required layers. The foundations to deceive.

The masses of colour. A minefield of ruffles and V-Necks in neon’s and animal prints lay before you. Nylon fibres flex muscularly between your fingers as you test each garment.

The wind nips playfully at your feet as you sling your hair up and out of your face. Your arms swing bare and gaily as your euphoria heightens. You find yourself amidst posses of gal pals, their shrill voices giving voice to your own as you chase the waterline. Your exposed midriffs the cause for husky catcalls as you giggle seductively.

Nuances of adolescence clinging to the wind.

You find yourself running through the dead wind. Its attacks, vicious, as it relieves your hair of its restraints. It’s beside your ear. Ridicule prevalent in its rumble, daring you to yell. Hair whips across your face, hiding the submission in your structure, forcing you to retire, forcing you to find refuge,

Mind. Body. Spirit. The complete package they say. You’re lying across the cold, tiled floor in the bathroom. The steam has long since evaporated much like the gush of effervescence that ran through your bloodstream, promising it all. You lie there, spent. Looking up at the glamour that lies strewn across the cabinet you wonder, what’s your damage? Adhesive gropes to your nails as your hair lies lankly by your shoulders; your feet lay bare, bar a slight line of sand clinging above your ankles as your swimsuit tightens its hold on you, its transparency enough for your own clarity.

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