Confection

CONFECTION Laraine Kentridge Lasdon Everything I am seems to belong to someone else Everything I am seems to be someone else Imagine a memory mirror framed with pearlescent medallions painted with miniature portraits of apples, ginger toffee, and glutinous gummies. Day and night the mirror reflects blue-green fields or star-filled skies, ferris wheels and carousels, and a young girl alone, insubstantial, dressed in spun cotton candy, sweet, hoping to be liked in her fairy floss robe. The glass shatters my reflection, shifting light, mirror image wounds, blood flowing backwards. I pull thin sharp shards from the shattered glass with my bare hands rendering all semblance, remembrance, unreliable. I smile a satirical smile, a baroque smile of a girl of a girl who accepts stories of familial gatherings, embraces that were never for her. Everything I am belongs to me Everything I seem to be, I am There is no mirror.