The Mirror and the Flame

I pause for a moment, like one holding their breath before diving. My body is a beast tamed by time, with broken wings that were once flame. In the mirror, I don’t look—I recognize myself. She—the one who weeps—is who I was when I didn’t yet know how to defend myself. I—the one who watches—learned to hold the quill’s thread, even if it no longer flies.

The red background screams the secrets I never told. I am a creature of two worlds: the one where pain repeats in silence and the one where dignity, even in monstrosity, rises.