her tiny audience of one
I grew up in a house of mirrors, but none of them reflected me. They only showed her— her sharp edges, her endless hunger, her smile too wide, stretched taut like a mask.
She made the world small, shrinking it to the size of her shadow. Family became strangers, their voices distant ghosts that I wasn’t allowed to touch.
Her words were storms, tearing through my tiny frame, and her hands, when they found me, left echoes that never faded.
I was too young to know what hate looked like, but I learned it in her eyes.
Once, she pretended to faint, calling me a source of exhaustion: a performance just for me, her tiny audience of one. And I, four years old and trembling, thought the world had cracked open.
I cried until my voice was raw, begging her to wake, but she would only lay there, her stillness mocking my terror.
By sixth grade, I learned the art of escape.
Not with doors or windows, but with the quiet thought that if I were no longer here,
I wouldn’t have to go home. Home, where the walls whispered threats, and her voice carried the weight of promises I didn’t want her to keep.
And though I still feel the echoes in the corners of my mind, in the cracks of my chest— they remind me that I survived.
That even in the house of mirrors, I was never her reflection.
I was always more.
— Lux
