MOTHER MIRROR
Photographer - Tobi Brun
I always take forever to get ready. I force the itchy fabric of tulle and cotton down my body as I slither into it, making sure my “bits fit right”.
At twelve years old, I don’t think I’d have any “bits'' to speak of, yet my mother echoing to me from downstairs, with her shapewear and diet soda, protein milkshakes and cigarettes, instills
within in that even as a pre-teen, I must be small enough or else “I’d never make it.”
The mirror, standing proudly, an arching mouth laughing at me, I can’t seem to escape its addictive, smirking surface.
I run my long pale fingertips at the surface of the mirror as my eyes adjust and distort my image, and I am once again overstimulated by my mother shouting at me from the first floor to ‘hurry
up’.
Is that a zit coming in? Did I eat too much? Why does my face look so weird?
The scent of cheap cotton candy perfume clouds around me and I feel locked in front of my alternate-universe self looking back at me with an emotion I can’t quite recognize, on the verge
of laughing—No, crying?— the feeling is like an anchor to my feet.
It holds me there steady, my red pumps digging into the carpet, the vines of each grass-like fabric embracing me lovingly in front of the mirror. I’m an only child, so I must be mother’s favorite, and least favorite all at the same time. The golden child, yet the black sheep, mother’s little doll that collects dust once she’s finished playing. Yet, when I’m on a stage with layers of makeup and archaic judges ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I’d tell the audience members with the 20,000 monster eyes and the male announcer who analyzes my frame and chest a little too long, that I wanted to be ‘just like my mommy!’, even though I was lying.
I smiled big, teeth a chemical white, hoping my acting was convincing enough— that the script was believable enough to make my mother gaze at me with
pride for just a little longer.
I wonder if she knew I was lying too. I wonder. I bet we fooled them. “You’re perfect, just perfect!” I see my mother mouth to me.
Or maybe it was “You’re blowing it, just fake it!”
Kenna DeValor (@teadragonz) is a nonbinary + queer writer and current university student residing in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and they are an English Literature major and Creative Writing minor. They have been writing stories since they were eight years old and has always loved a good freaky little book. Kenna has been published in multiple art/literary journals and magazines around the East Coast/Central US, UK, and AUS. They have been on a huge playwriting kick recently. When Kenna’s not writing, reading, analyzing banned books, or performing a silly song on a stage, they are a tattoo artist in their hometown of Bethlehem, PA. Kenna loves to wear all the different "hats'' of the art world.
