Radical honesty

Have you ever smiled for too long, ’till you’re aching?

I’m lying on this white metal bed, people coming in and going out the room. I’m surrounded by colourful flowers and smiling faces, wishing I could care.

You struggle to keep those smiles on your faces, while asking me how I feel and telling me I look so beautiful. “Oh, my! You seem to become more beautiful every year,” she shouts, in a fake, strident voice. They tell me that my eyes are the coulour of the flowers they brought and he caresses my hair saying it feels like silk. You ask me why I am so unusually silent. Youusedtobealrightwhathappened. Etceteraetcetera.

I strip away the blanket and get up, in my blue panties and my torn shirt, I pass by the sleeping lady with only one breast, slowly moving towards the mirror. The area near the sink smells of piss and toothpaste and flowers. I stare at my pale face, my hollow cheeks, my sunken eyes and the dark rings under. I bite my dry lips, noticing the new wrinkle that appeared in the right corner of my mouth. I touch the badly-sewn scar, which seems to be grinning at me, in the mirror, with all those uneven stitches. I am so skinny that I wouldn’t be surprised if I started floating.

And all of a sudden I feel like breaking the damned mirror and kick you all out of the room forever. So I can be with the breast-less woman, who never speaks a word.