The Mirror's Gaze

I stand before the mirror, and it feels like a judge’s eye. It holds a truth I don't want to see, tracing lines over my skin like cracks on a map I never drew. I hide in shadows of others' words, whispers of beauty I’ll never touch. They don’t know these scars, these flaws, this history written in silence on a body I can’t call my own. I count the spaces between ribs like failures— as if the hollow places define me. The softness, the curves I despise, become prisons I cannot escape. I pull at my skin like clay, wishing I could sculpt away the parts that scream too loudly in my mind. But what if, beneath it all, there's something more than shame? What if I tell the mirror: "Look at me, not with the eyes of the world, but with the eyes of love?" This body, this vessel, has carried me through storms, weathered battles, endured the weight of a thousand silent wars. It is the history of every tear, the architecture of survival. Each stretch, each scar is a line in a poem that says, "I am still here."