The Lady of Shalott as a Dyke
Are you afraid of someone like me? Do you resent that my joints slot too easily into yours? I am that supple fear you possess. Consumptive, a devouring of flesh. Let me in. Open up your body for mine.
Our eyes meet. It feels far too much like sex. A climax of the senses; I have to look away before I get trapped in that pupil, black and consumptive as a void and framed in irises sharp as teeth. When I glance back, she is smiling, no longer looking at me. She is licking her lips.
Open up. I let her in. She fucks me hollow with a knife’s edge. God, how I bleed, viscera winking in the light: a diamond wedding ring. She spells out devotion with a lingering eye. She carves me hollow, absent of touch; I lie shaking and cut apart without her fingers ever having suctioned to the surface of my skin. A granite body.
This woman in the mirror makes me laugh wide mouthed and carefree like some mimed Ophelia. The mad woman, shirting her own gaze. I love the way my body curves. I love the slender line of my neck. I count all the places where I am less, hollow, slim, taking up little space or no space at all. This woman in the mirror, she has rows and rows of sharp teeth. I pry back my jaw and touch my fingers to each of them. And they bleed! My fingers bleed. The red, that perfect shade, gets caught in all the folds and cracks of my lips, stains me beautiful. I am beautiful!
I turn the light off. Stare at myself a little longer, perplexed, enchanted, Miss Narcissus, the nude woman in the portrait titled Vapid. God, those eyes. I love those eyes. Chatoyant and haunting, watching in the night. I blink, strobe. Silver gives way to diamonds, big and fat and wet diamonds; I blink, strobe. The light cuts back on. I turn my body again, and this time, scoop up the swell of my stomach ‘til it hides beneath my rib cage.
“How strange, that relationship women seem to have with their own reflections,” she murmurs. I realise I am watching her mouth.
“Hmm?”
“You love her, you hate her. Women are obsessed with her.” She tilts her head. “Aren’t you?”
I think back to the last time I saw my own reflection. It would have been this morning. No, on my lunch break. I waited in the bathroom so that I could fix my lipstick.
“Like Alice through the fucking looking glass. Did you know that Lewis Carroll was a pedophile?”
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up. Theresa captivates, demands: a modern Salome. “Are you suggesting that women are pedophiles for looking in the mirror?”
I am so glad to have made her laugh. Like luscious fruit and birdsong. “No. Well… we do often look for some subtle sign of our lost prepubescent selves, though, don’t we?” She mimics the trappings of a woman in motion, follows an invisible curve. “I am so slender here, I am so fine and hairless there! Ha. I mean, Alice goes through the mirror, the very thing that confines this image of her. The very thing that shows her all she is worth, all her body is made of. But Lewis Carroll wasn’t thinking of shit like that, was he? No, he was thinking of fucking little girls.”
Betty, overhearing us, makes some indignant noise. I forget how Theresa can be a little crass. I never mind it.
“Have you ever had sex in front of a mirror?”
“Theresa!”
She glances back over her shoulder, and I watch her neck. “I didn’t mean you, Betty. Why, would you like to try it?”
“You are so… so…”
“Yes,” she says, speaking softly. “I am.”
I am still watching her neck.
Our eyes meet. It feels far too much like sex. A climax of the senses; I have to look away before I get trapped in that pupil, black and consumptive as a void and framed in irises sharp as teeth. When I glance back, she is smiling, no longer looking at me. She is licking her lips.
Open up. I let her in. She fucks me hollow with a knife’s edge. God, how I bleed, viscera winking in the light: a diamond wedding ring. She spells out devotion with a lingering eye. She carves me hollow, absent of touch; I lie shaking and cut apart without her fingers ever having suctioned to the surface of my skin. A granite body.
This woman in the mirror makes me laugh wide mouthed and carefree like some mimed Ophelia. The mad woman, shirting her own gaze. I love the way my body curves. I love the slender line of my neck. I count all the places where I am less, hollow, slim, taking up little space or no space at all. This woman in the mirror, she has rows and rows of sharp teeth. I pry back my jaw and touch my fingers to each of them. And they bleed! My fingers bleed. The red, that perfect shade, gets caught in all the folds and cracks of my lips, stains me beautiful. I am beautiful!
I turn the light off. Stare at myself a little longer, perplexed, enchanted, Miss Narcissus, the nude woman in the portrait titled Vapid. God, those eyes. I love those eyes. Chatoyant and haunting, watching in the night. I blink, strobe. Silver gives way to diamonds, big and fat and wet diamonds; I blink, strobe. The light cuts back on. I turn my body again, and this time, scoop up the swell of my stomach ‘til it hides beneath my rib cage.
#
“How strange, that relationship women seem to have with their own reflections,” she murmurs. I realise I am watching her mouth.
“Hmm?”
“You love her, you hate her. Women are obsessed with her.” She tilts her head. “Aren’t you?”
I think back to the last time I saw my own reflection. It would have been this morning. No, on my lunch break. I waited in the bathroom so that I could fix my lipstick.
“Like Alice through the fucking looking glass. Did you know that Lewis Carroll was a pedophile?”
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up. Theresa captivates, demands: a modern Salome. “Are you suggesting that women are pedophiles for looking in the mirror?”
I am so glad to have made her laugh. Like luscious fruit and birdsong. “No. Well… we do often look for some subtle sign of our lost prepubescent selves, though, don’t we?” She mimics the trappings of a woman in motion, follows an invisible curve. “I am so slender here, I am so fine and hairless there! Ha. I mean, Alice goes through the mirror, the very thing that confines this image of her. The very thing that shows her all she is worth, all her body is made of. But Lewis Carroll wasn’t thinking of shit like that, was he? No, he was thinking of fucking little girls.”
Betty, overhearing us, makes some indignant noise. I forget how Theresa can be a little crass. I never mind it.
“Have you ever had sex in front of a mirror?”
“Theresa!”
She glances back over her shoulder, and I watch her neck. “I didn’t mean you, Betty. Why, would you like to try it?”
“You are so… so…”
“Yes,” she says, speaking softly. “I am.”
I am still watching her neck.
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