Mirror, Mirror on The Wall

Her childhood brush with the soft bristles laid overturned on the bathroom’s titled floor—coiled strands of oily black hair surrounded by jagged shards of glass laid limply at the crime scene. The largest shard, the size of her entire palm, missed her pinky toe by mere inches—by a hair even.

The crack, originating from the center like an unintentional bull’s eye and expanding perfectly down the middle, was impossible to miss, as was the truth reflected back to Monique.

Hair hair’s uneven part, a whole inch away from her head’s center, created a winding path to oblivion. The split ends conspired with the tangles to prevent the growth they knew she longed for.

The bushy eyebrows lacked the shape, edges, and angles she had learned about in geometry class. Linearly, as if a toddler had glued them to her face, they stuck on her forehead.

Although the scar above her eyes added mystique and allure, the wound ran deeper than the roots of the Bristlecone Pine tree she had learned about yesterday — that was before she tuned out for the remaining ten minutes of class.

As faithful as a gardener was to her blossoming flowers, she tended to her lips with fragrance-free lip balms and exfoliated them every other week to achieve fuller, plumper, hydrated lips. Instead of plumping, they peeled.

Drier than the desert, they flaked, chapped, and split like the Red Sea.

She was the culprit, guilty of attempting to destroy the image reflected of herself and her many imperfections. When the salty tears began to flow like sweet sap from a tree, it wasn’t just from the realization that no amount of broken mirrors would change the reflection.