Anatomy Of The Gaslighter
She doesn’t smash the mirror.
She just tells it a better story
until it forgets her face.
She says, You said this and that.
He says, That never happened.
She says it louder, like a prayer,
and waits for my memory to kneel.
I bring her my hurt like a cup of water.
She pours it back and tells me it was always empty.
I bring my fear like a small animal.
She names it mine and lets it starve.
She wears certainty the way others wear coats.
I shiver in questions.
She calls that weakness.
I call it surviving.
Every time she is wrong,
the room changes shape.
Walls move.
Doors forget their hinges.
Time learns to walk backward
and blame learns my name.
She cannot carry her own shadow,
so she hands it to me
and says, Hold this. It’s yours.
I begin to doubt the clock.
I begin to doubt my hands.
I begin to doubt the quiet voice
that used to say, You are real.
But somewhere—
like a match in a long tunnel—
my memory keeps breathing.
It remembers what was said.
It remembers what was done.
It remembers what's now left of me.
And that is how it starts:
not with shouting,
not with proof,
but with one small, stubborn truth
that refuses to lie down.
I take my name back.
I give the mirror its job again.
I let her shadow fall where it belongs.
She can keep her stories.
I am done living inside them.
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