You wake slowly. Without intention. The ceiling remains unchanged. The light through the curtain drifts in, pale and indifferent. And somewhere before full thought, you sense it.
It starts again.
You sit on the bed's edge. Feet to floor, cold and solid - you are present. Again. The room exhales around you - walls expand, contract - or perhaps it's your chest. You no longer know. You lost track a long time ago.
The mirror is waiting.
You move around it - carefully, the way you step around something dead. But eventually, you stand there because the world requires you to stand there. To check. To adjust.
The glass returns something warped. A reflection made of mismatched parts. Misaligned. Tilted. Like seeing yourself through unsettled water. You blink, the face blinks, but its timing is off - just skewed enough that you cannot tell if you gaze at yourself or at something wearing...
You look away.
You always look away.
The shower should be simple. Water. Heat. Habit. But habit conceals it - in the unseen moments, the quiet, where nothing pads the space between you and yourself.
The water runs over a form you never chose. Eyes closed, but that never suffices. You still feel it. Deeper. In the structure, the groundwork. In what was poured before you were aware enough to...
You wash quickly. Methodically. Like cleaning a room you'd rather avoid.
You do not look down.
The drawer opens like a display case.
Everything is arranged. Tidy. Conventional. Behind the glass of acceptability, expectation, mundanity - what avoids scrutiny and...
You have seen the other displays. Standing outside for so long, you know every detail. The colours and shapes you cannot reach. You watch others pick them up easily, as if they always belonged to them. They just...
You reach for your drawer, and everything inside is a concession. A minor surrender. You put on what you always do. Another mask. It rests upon your skin like a language you were forced to learn but never...
You open your mouth; a sound comes out, never yours. It belongs to the mask, to the performance. You hear it from outside - as if it were a stranger's voice behind a wall.
You keep speaking. You have learned to keep speaking.
The door closes behind you, and now you belong to the world.
The world does not know you. It knows the draft you edited after you learned you needed it. You walk among people: the street bends, the buildings lean in close, the sky presses down - a colour you cannot name.
No one else notices.
No one else ever notices.
A crowded room. Noise, motion, and the routine mechanisms of proximity. The walls hum at a frequency only you register. Someone laughs. Someone says something to you, and you answer from behind the glass - pleasant, suitable, forgettable. You have mastered forgettable. It is your safest shape. The one that draws the fewest...
They use words for you - names, assumptions. Each is a pin pressed into something soft, not enough to bleed but enough to remind you: they see only the mask and think it is...
You nod.
You perform.
You are so good at this. You have been doing this for...
Across the room, someone moves easily, unthinking. They exist in themselves like a bird in the sky - without question or apology. Something small and tired presses its hands against the glass and watches.
It must be nice.
To just be.
There is a place where you are real. Small, private - a name, a space where the mask comes off and the glass disappears. For hours, you can be the truest version, wordless, only feeling. No eyes. No corrections. Just you.
A bittersweet amnesia. You breathe differently. Something unclenches in your chest. For a moment, the crooked mirror straightens, and you almost see...
The world does not live there. The world is still waiting on the other side. And the glass rebuilds itself, pane by pane, and you are here again. You always were...
You still wear a mask at home. You realise this somewhere between the door and the bed - that you cannot take it off. Not because you choose to wear it, but because you no longer know where it ends and you...
The mirror is still there. You pass it. You do not look. You have spent all your looking for today.
The bed is where the thoughts live.
The dark is full. Everything held in place during the day breaks loose, filling the room like rising water. You lie still, hoping it will not...
Wanting comes, quiet - like everything true about you has learned to be quiet. Images, fragments: a version moving through the world unapologetic, seen and unflinching.
You can see this person. They are right there. Behind the glass. Close enough to...
And somewhere behind your eyes, there is a pressure. Something is trying to surface. Something that wants to break through the way water wants to break through a dam. But your eyes are dry. They have been dry for so long. They learned that there is no...
The dark tightens. You pull the blanket nearer. For weight. For grounding - because the room stretches again, walls receding, and you are small in the centre, small and shapeless and...
Sleep is not rest. Sleep is the absence. And absence is the closest thing to peace you...
The ceiling will remain the same. The light will be the same light. The mirror will be waiting. The drawer will be full of things that are not yours. The door will close behind you, and the mask will fit the way it always fits.
Almost
Almost.
Almost...
And you will do it again. Because that is what you do. You put on the masquerade and walk out into a world that does not know you are disappearing in a way that does not leave...
And the day after that...
And the day after...
And... *You are so tired.*
ns216.73.216.217da2
and then Add to home screen.