i am scared that i

love my friends so much more than

they'll ever love me

and i am scared some

one will love me so much more

than i could love them

LED lights force your face deep into the mirror cracks

Your eyes are so so wide you think you’ll fall

Down down into a pit

Have you always been this fat?

Your skin is sluggish yellow in the bright bright night

And the shadows look like scars gouged by a poison knife

The mirror stares back with so much bad luck

And you feel yourself falling down down into that familiar fate

You are not enough and you

Deserve to fall

Your eyes are so so wide and you are so so flawed

But child, the mirror is cracked, and you are not

The reflection is flawed the reflection is warped

Beauty pours out of those wide wide eyes

And your skin is the colour of an early morning sky

So fly up up into it’s arms

Your soul is as deep as the depths of your eyes and both are full of such bright light

You will always be enough and you

Deserve to fly

Your eyes are so wide and you are beautifully flawed

I do polynomial long division at 11pm. And I get the right answers again and again. Because I know the steps, I know the code, I know what invisible highlighter lines join each number and I know whether to multiply or divide. I just don’t know

Why.

I stare at the steps I’ve done the lines of n and try to work out... I’m dividing this to give me this so I’m subtracting these to... I don’t know. I cannot make these random steps line up in my head. Why. Why. Why.

I realise I am living life like a school child who shouldn’t be taking a level maths trying to prove herself at 11pm. That is to say. I live life like I do maths. I know the steps and I say the right things write the right numbers... But really I’m a sub par child trying to be an adult, trying to feel like a child, trying to prove to the world and to herself that ‘I got the right answer so I’m Okay’.

But it seems prolific that instead of laying down my pen besides my maths book and sleeping, I am writing speculative philosophy about equations and life.

We tread invisible egg shells

In our imaginary palace

Reality is slipping away from me like starlight

Humans have built their own gilded cage

The fabric of society is fake

Built on slavery and explotation

They gave life a price and called it capitalism

The earth beneath my feet feels manmade

Less and less of the world remains real

Need I travel to mars or Antarctic or the bottom of the sea

To find myself

Human lives revolve around the superficial

Humans were too advanced for this world;

We couldnt just live, breed, survive

We had to destroy, create, strive

For some invisible perfection

The universe has no agenda

So why do we

I’m falling

falling

falling.

And then I hit hard ground with a force that sends pain spazzaming through my newly mortal body

There is a burning burning sensation in my chest

Constricting

Squeezing

Tightening like snakes around my ribs

I open my mouth with a gasp of pain and my body heaves

Air

Air is flowing into me

I can feel lungs inflate inside my chest

I feel my new body relax

And there a thump

Thump

Thumping

In my ears

I run my hands over my body and everywhere there’s a pulsing beat

Ba-dom

Ba-dom

I have a heart

I press both hands against my chest and I feel it

Ba-dom ba-dom

I can feel the blood running around my body

Oh it is so strange to be human

So fragile

So magnificent

So many parts

No longer an empty reflection

Ba-dom

Ba-dom

My chest aches and I realise I need to open my mouth again

Breathe

It seems humans need to do that a lot

Strange

Marvellous

So

Human.

A name on a bright pink poststick note pushed through my door. It has come from a Client, though the name has passed through many mouths and minds before arriving here.

A quick google search can normally give me their city, work place, possibly a postcode. Sometimes I have to dig deeper, a few lines of code, a few firewalls cracked, but within ten minutes I can find out everything I need to know. Their address. Their place of work. The names of all their family members. The names of their children. The names of their childrens school.

My parents are, by nessasity, my accomplices. We move with each new job. I start at the school and change my name. Gemma. Daisy. Polly. Maisy. I tell my story; parents moved jobs, parents divorced, I was bullied in my old school. And then I infiltrate.

In a day I’m sitting with my target at lunch. In a week we walk to school together every day. Two weeks in and I invite them over for tea, three days later they return the favour.

First time is reconisance. I already know almsot all I need to know about my target; if they work from home, if they take medication, if they have any health conditons, if the own a gun. Now, between movie marathons and just dance, I get to know the house. Where the pills are. Where they keep the gun.

There are many ways to effectivly kill someone. Heart attacks are good, change their medication so they go into cardiac arrest. Poisinings are similar. Faked sucicides. Push them off a building, shoot them in the head.

Thats what I do today. I excuse myself to my friend, ask to go to the toilet, and go upstairs. I’ve already acquired the gun from the basement down stairs. I put on some gloves and retrieve the weapon from its hiding place. Then I go to the office and open the door, gun behind my back.

He looks up, perplexed. ‘Hi, uh, Maisy?’

I blush, ‘Sorry, wrong room.’

He motions that its okay, and I back away, he looks down.

I step to the side and shoot him in the side of his head. He flops like a puppet come lose and blood spills over his desk. I smile.

I place the gun in the dead mans hand, making sure to press his finger tips firmly against the handle, then I rifle through the desk and find some overdue bills. I place them on the table, and let them soak up blood. I take the gloves off and stuff them down my bra. I smile. The perfect suicide. The perfect murder.

I go back to the doorway and open my mouth and scream.

‘I heard a gunshot.’ I tell the police later. ‘I opened the door and then-’ I sob, and the police pat me on the back and send me home.

We stay for three more weeks so as not to arrouse suspecion. I comfort my victims child and then go through therapy, pretend to be tramautised, my parents decide to take me to a new city. There are tearful goodbyes with my new friends. Then we move. Sell our house, not that we need to, with the thousands flowing into our off shore bank account. We go to a new city. New name, new hair colour, new school, new pink poststick note.

Warm wax like honey dripping down your back

Glazed like a carcuss

Sweating defeat

Did you realise?

That your god had made you a

Flightless thing

Doomed to fall

Slick sunlight as heavy as sin

Were you blind?

Stars in your eyes as you fell

Flailing feathers

Firey

You fell like the most perfect ending

I wonder if your god laughed

In the sky

As your pride melted to misery

Mist like

Chemicals in your lungs

Coughing from the sun

I wonder if your god pittied

The mortal who flew to close

Wax like honey

Drip dripping down your intentions

A heavenly carcuss falling to someone else’s feast

But maybe god envied you

The mortal who learnt to fly

Who learnt to fall

Down down like the most perfect ending

I wonder if your god ever longs to fall

Like honey

Drip dripping down your spine.

I look in the mirror and see a ghost

A pale shadow

Quivering

Clinging

To reality

I reach to her

And she reaches out

Our hearts contract

My soul is cracked

In every mirror I look

I leave a bit of my smile

A bit of myself

My being is fracturing

Fleeing

Fleeting as the

Wind and

I am a ghost.

A pale shadow

Clutching reality

Like a life bouy

In a ceasless sea.

I don't know if I am in love

Or if I'll ever be

(and if I'm asking that question

I'm probably not

In love

That is)

Its just there's so many

Love songs

So many romance films

Society taught me that we must pair of like song birds;

A princess needs a prince

Two princesses would not be so great

(To society)

But at least they'd be a pair

And thats the point of life;

A lone soul

Is lonely

We are each one half of a whole

I have been told

So I guess its no wonder

That I feel like I'm always searching

That my eyes make me see double

Everyone in a couple

But me-

I'm alone

And more than anything

I want to be

Okay

With that.

Death, bringer of darkness, deliverer of souls, destroyer of life, looked in the mirror and sighed. It was Christmas day, and you’d think after all the souls he’d been collecting recently he should get a day off. But no, everyone had to keep getting drunk, and dying; getting hit by cars, and dying; falling over, and dying; getting hit by cocunuts, and dying. Some people just died for no reason. It was infuriating.

The truth was, Death (bringer of darkness, deliverer of souls, destroyer of life) hadn’t had a holiday in 3.7 billion years when he burst into existence. If he belived in a higher power, like many of the mortals did, he would probably file a complaint; as it stood there was no-one, and it was Deaths belief that the world had just appeared in some freak accident, and thus has he appeared too. Colatoral damage.

Today his infuriatingly punctual, cosmic list had 165,000 names on. Its funny that more people die on holidays; its mostly because of drunk driving or fights, but last year there were a few cases of freak Christmas tree accidents, which was fun.

Since he couldn’t pause people dying (which Death thought was a bit ridiculous, since he was Death and all), he paused time so he could decide on todays Reaping outfit.

He was wearing his favorite outfit; brown skin, blue eyes, pink skirt, fishnet tights, a band tshirt from a band that didn’t exist (Death doesn’t really live in a particular timezone). He wore a band of daisys on his cropped black hair, but now he takes them off and watches them wither in his hands. Normally he enjoys the look on mortals faces as he took his black cloak off, bowing low, to reveal this form (mysoginistic bankers were always the funniest), but now he just wasn’t in the mood for it.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was tall, slim, white, with a grey suit and grey eyes. ‘hello. you are dead. welcome to the after life’ he mutters to the mirror, and his voice is subtibly dreary enough, so he shakes the battered pocket watch and watches the second hand slowly start ticking, gathering speed. He sighs and steps into the void, which will take him to work.