The Mirror Girl

There she is. The other girl. She only comes to see me in the
morning and the evening. She calls me into being with a grimace and a
sigh, and I must stand before her, passive, to be examined like a horse
by a prospective owner, who doesn't want to buy. We always have the
same routine. Face first. We begin with the forehead, then the temples,
then we move down the nose, onto the cheeks, and finish with the chin.
When she's finished I look like I've been in a fight with a goblin,
with tiny painful fists. She steps back and turns me sideways. She
pinches my stomach and slaps at my backside, flushing the skin with a
sort of day-glo redness. She cups each breast and lifts and pushes, her
fingers bruising the tender flesh a little like a lover intent on his
own gratification. Her face looks at my body with a strange blend of
concentration and revulsion. She turns her back on me and clenches my
buttocks. I have to crane round as she runs her hands down, searching
for the cellulite dimples and digging her fingers in to try to push the
flesh back to shape. She gives a final grimace and disappears from my
view.

She's back a minute later, this time dressed in tight blue jeans and a
tight red t-shirt. Her focus is on my stomach, where the flesh I try
desperately to keep in is bulging slightly over the trousers. I do not
escape another hard pinch before she rips off the t-shirt and
disappears once more. This time she's only gone a second before she
returns, in a big t-shirt to hide the stomach and a sweatshirt to hide
the backside. On the mantle, the clock strikes. It's beyond my view,
but the other girl can see. She flicks her eyes at it, and turns back
to me. She leans in once more and quickly paints my face, disguising
the worst of the swollen redness she induced. She runs her fingers
through my hair and tries to make it lie flat. From her face, her
attempt was in vain. She brings the hair forward to hide my blotched
visage. Then, one final look and sigh before she disappears until the
evening, when we will repeat our pantomime in reverse.

Left alone, I sit and ponder the other girl and her judgements of me.
For all her looking, she never sees. She has never once looked in my
eyes, and she will never know my thoughts because of it.