rage in my reflection

Look into his eyes. He is the version of you who gave in, but only in a specific definition of dark. Most of the dark versions of you would no longer be reflected in the mirror because their darkness poisoned their psyche until death looked like the end of the depression, like the answer to every unsolvable question. This reflection, this version, gave into the darker parts of you that hated others instead of yourself, that lashed out, that trauma dumped because reflection-you thought everyone ought to know what they condemned you to, that intentions didn't excuse what you left to survive. On some level, you agree, but he actually acts on the anger you suppress and project and hide for fear of what unleashing it might result in. He has seen the results - unwashed hair, homeless rather than housed in the home you know, rather than tolerate being a victim of other's decisions, your mirror counterpart is entirely a victim of his own making. He chooses isolation over connection again and again, unable to believe a softer version of reality is even possible. You know softness, but also know the danger hidden in avoiding all intimacy altogether.

The longer the mirror-self avoids others, the more dangerous their intentions, their existence, appears because he's forgotten the good times. He can no longer remember the reason you stay somewhere with a mirror to even see him in the first place. No longer remember why he had ever let anyone touch him, no longer remember being that six year old who worshipped her older brother, thought he hung the stars in the sky, thought her parents could never lie. She, her softness, her love, is all he can sneer at when stares back at you. You, who lets this continue, who hides somewhere inside yourself as your brother takes and takes and calls it love.

You hate yourself, you see him and see a version that fought, that got out but never truly got the happy ending escape was meant to bring. Are these your only options? Drown or float, the current never letting your body hit land? Your reflection disappears, blocked by the tears that show up. There's a reason most dark versions never survive past adolescence. Most die by their own hand. Seeing, growing into adulthood and still being used by someone who claims to love you, still unable to stop him, seeing that even the version who escaped still looks lost and miserable. What point does continuing down this life even hold? You hold the tunnel with no light at the end to your eye like a telescope, peer through the darkness and your mirror-self looks entirely unchanged. He probably knows what you can't see, whatever tether that keeps you trapped in your family was cut years ago for him and yet. And yet he's still you, still as hopeless and pathetic as you feel. Or maybe less pathetic, since rage holds more power than grief does, but you're both still suffering. Suffering from sex ought to be a goddamn oxymoron. And yet... and yet...

And yet your brother still sees you in ways you can never be able to unsee yourself as. Ways no amount of mirror-gazing will make you see yourself as. You can't want yourself the way he wants you, neither version, not the mirror who ran nor the reality who plays dead, neither can turn fraternity into eros. You wish you could; your mirror-self wishes nobody ever felt that way at all. You wish you could steal away into the mirror world - at least there you’re unwanted.