Adena M'lynn's Voice

  by Adena M’lynn I wake up—  but it’s not my bed. Not my hands. Fingernails shorter. Breath heavier. I think… she was here. Mouth moves— the laugh is too loud. Eyes blink wrong. The mirror is someone else. I copy her smile anyway. Good mimic. Good girl. Thoughts pile— no—spill. I don’t know if I’m remembering or being told what to remember. Feels real. Doesn’t mean it’s mine. I try to gather myself— but myself scatters. Fingers of smoke. Pages torn out. Locks without keys. Will I go back— into my body? Or will my body crawl in here with me, into the dark place where the names blur and the days slide out of order? I ask— Who am I? It echoes. The answer comes back in different voices. I think I’m still searching. I think I always have been. Maybe one day I’ll find the heartbeat that feels like home.

She never looked in mirrors for too long. Not because she hated her face—but because she didn’t recognize it. Some days it looked too old, other days too young. Some days she looked fat. And some days she was a boy. Sometimes the reflection felt like a stranger’s, like the glass had a glitch and showed someone else entirely. Touch was worse. Her skin was not skin—it was memory. A living, breathing battleground. Every inch had a story, and most of them were sexually violent. She never asked for her body to remember what her mind worked so hard to forget, but it did anyway—in the way she flinched at kindness, in the way she pulled away from lovers, in the way she could never fully relax even when she was safe. She grew up thinking her body was the enemy. That she was fat and ugly. That her butt was too big. Her breast were too small. She grew up being weighed each day and was shamed when gaining even a pound.  And when you believe that you are worthless, you learn to punish her....