King of Peace

My body is a mirror, a vessel plated with crushed diamonds--in the autumn whenever an aspen tree enters through my bedroom window, I try to ignore the sounds of the decaying leaves and creaking branches. They tell me that the jewel of a body I was given doesn’t reflect the moonlight correctly, that the heart on my sleeve is getting too much blood in the carpet, I’m too much like Venus when I strive to be Mars. Red leaves look black in the lack of light and I can feel the rubies that circle my head like a halo, breaking and shattering, and it pierces the space within my head where a garden grows. The aspen trees keep speaking to me, saying that the sapphire underneath my eyes from lack of sleep turns others away from me, “You look like a pile of boulders that can’t hold up the world--God gave you a task and you can’t even complete it,” They tell me. “The men of Mars would never accept you, soon you will fall as Rome did and fall into the velvet of the sea and drown.” “You don’t deserve the diamonds in place of your skin, give them up to beings such as us who will die soon, as you won’t leave as quickly as we want to.” My response forms into branches of my own, the gems shrieking in my body and I float above the bed that has molded into the corner of my room. I am ethereal and beautiful and I am the mirror that speaks to me. I deserve the things I was given, and I don’t need the women of Venus or the men of Mars to solidify my beliefs for they are mine and mine alone. I am the mirror that speaks to me, a vessel plated with crushed diamonds.