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the woman in the mirror does not exist anymore.

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the world had already put a cloak of haze over itself to remind me that beautiful things never last, like i’m someone who’s meant to cling onto that beauty forever, because only the beauty that has passed can make this present ugly world a little more beautiful.

in front of me sits the white man that smells like weed and shit, his blue irises blown wide by his black pupils like black holes as he lures the girl in front of him into them. he wishes he could jump across the aisle and fuck her right there—even if she resists or screams on this double decker, nobody will hear her (like me). i know men very well, like you, especially.

i walk on broken feet wrapped in leather and more black nylon through the haze. you’re looking at me like you know something, or like you’re wondering on what occasion this bitch with her smokey eyes and grey lips walks the streets of colorful nightingales—feather-light body and yet the heaviness i carry, you wouldn’t know, you’d only feel it but never give it a name. the colorful couple that walks parallel to me—they too wouldn’t know what it’s like to have a soul fragmented into more than halves, and each one pulls you toward a different direction like a cyclical storm. one day you’re down to nothing but a melting brain while you kneel in submission as a man strokes his pride, the next you’re kneeling down to god on ice while counting all your sins on the rosary for someone who doesn’t even exist anymore at this hour, on this day—in this cycle.

///

withdrawal at the ATM again; cash (weed) is the currency to help the helpless—from addiction to the addicted that lay on the streets. perhaps i’d get fucked by a man for money and give all the money to the woman laying in her own piss just to tell her to get her up for once and do something with her life, because that’s what they all say—your pain doesn’t make you unique, all that you’ve endured doesn’t make you deserving of a helping hand, so get up and help yourself—and cut some slack for the passersby who don’t want to help in any way but by dropping a useless coin in your empty starbucks cup. fuck you and your little starbucks cups, that’s all i can think of when i see it, even in your misery—it only reminds me of those obnoxiou white girls that live in the moment, just the way i envy it; boyfriends and pretty little party dresses—and their fucking starbucks cups, doesn’t it taste like blood with all that sugar and capitalism you drink everyday?

///

the bus reeks again of weed and shit, and the man that sits in front of me, cross-eyed, his hungry eyes already undress me as he tells me about how he’ll light this bus on fire and that nobody fucking knows a thing about him. somewhere in that shit-covered mess, something touches close to him. his nails—gone and bloodied, his hair sticks to his head, and he rocks back and forth in front of me, playing with his black lighter as it burns his fingers even more—it feels good doesn’t it? or perhaps you don’t feel it at all. the coolness of the window feels more liberating than oxygen as another man sits beside me. he watches me apply my lipstick, either out of shock or bitter manly irony, as the drug-blown man tells me how much he hates the fucking planet while mr. nobody beside me looks me up and down—all i can see through my mirror is nobody despite the three bodies that sit in the corner of this bus.

i dress and adorn as if i’m heading to streetwalk, when all that ruminates in my head is how many more bills downtown will take from me. one day it’s a dealer, today it’s a pharmacist. no matter how much armor i wear—makeup, perfume, lace, seduction—deep down i’m rotten to the core. even in the thrill of it all, another woman can walk away from a room well-fucked and somehow more glamorous than ever, and then there’s my rotting soul that births an illness from every bit of good that life can offer me. whether good is red roses in holy water or leather belts on bare skin, spiritually demiromantic or hedonistically masochistic—it always turns into poison, no matter how good it feels. i repeat every word of care said to me, yet it slithers on my tongue rather than melting like a sweet sugar cube and eventually a sweet memory.

hurt is the only language i have ever known, pain is the sweetest pleasure i’ve ever felt in this oh-so-complex world. it all exists yet it never exists in me.

///

early 2000s nostalgia makes me nauseous again—the mall that’s so empty yet so full, the one restaurant and drugstore that keeps it alive. i hand over my health card with a picture of a veiled girl to the pharmacist; she does a double-take. another four bills as i pay the price for hedonism—mother curses her hedonist brother who loses his money to gambling while i gamble with every fragment of myself every day, paying the price for games people played who don’t even exist anymore.

i shop for lipsticks again. beaming jim would collect different types of cigarettes with different flavors and leaves—for now all i’ve got is lipsticks. his cigarette-smoke breath was my air, mine to keep. here’s a lipstick in cherry, a stain on the cheek of another man—a gift for him to keep, a part of myself to give away, who will no longer exist outside this cyclical mania.

the fresh-off-the-boat man looks at me like i’m the last meal in this empty mall of fluorescent lights and tiled floors and closed shops. i tear my name—that never belonged to me—and my number that belongs to anybody but me. and these pills—familiar enough, so they must be mine.

i erase every proof of myself existing in downtown—matter of fact, my existence from this day will be gone. the proof fades away in this haze; the scent of him starts to fade from my skin, my curls lose their shape, my makeup smears—yet in the moment it turns into photographs, because somehow in this ugly life there’s still art. even in these drug-filled, zombie-walking streets—you see two kinds of zombies: girls blown out on heroin with broken legs and mini party dresses, or the fentanyl-jacked man whose pants fall below his ass crack, riding public transit to find a home like mr. nobody.

///

the sky is black, but not the comforting pitch-black that lulls you to sleep—the haze is bright enough to remind you that god exists, that hell exists, and you’re living in it. the smell of weed and chinese food from the seat across, with your little styrofoam takeout boxes and your little coach purses as you laugh off the bus—but the one who knows even an ounce about the girl sitting in front of her with her bandaged legs, she watches my face pucker at the bitterness of the weed, and she knows—she knows. yet she will never know. but she saw. that’s all that mattered.

i walk under the wet sky as it cries silently; i do the breathing for it. if i’m not vocal then who am i? the way my heels hit the ground and every head turns, the way this black cloak demands attention yet nobody wants to save themselves for a place so dark. this voice of mine—so loud yet so silent—it’s like everyone can hear me, yet nobody talks back—

///

—i tell the reflection—helpless reflection—through the black mirror, my screen.

who was present? i wouldn’t know. there’s a girl in me who clings to hope like it’s a sliver, and it always bites back—masochist at her core even when she gambles with hope.

this is god teaching you a lesson. girls like you need to be taught a lesson.

do you remember me again in the dead of march?

///

i tell father i won’t be home tonight. i throw every moral and shackle down this balcony. i’m at the top, like a god—not god, never god—but someone who only feels a sense of self when they can control the world the way god does. but remind me again, god—through a strike of lightning in the hotel room, through the torn-open bloody deer on the street—that you exist and you are in control of all the good and bad, never me. i was only meant to be thrown like a welcome mat to greet a new guest of bloodshed into this love-hotel heart of mine.

i feel like hürrem sultan at the top, as if the world is mine for a little while everyone’s asleep or high and i walk under fluorescent lights. i find the most claustrophobic corner so the walls can hug me for tonight, because i’ve stripped off my dress of hedonism—i’m nobody, i’ll blend in with the walls easily today.

this is what it’s like to feel like the world you walk in is maybe yours tonight. the next hour will remind you why it’s not.

///

a full bus after another as the phone keeps ringing. under this haze i remember you again—secretly hoping you’d come back even though life has well-assured me you won’t. that this time, while i’m high, you’ll take me into your arms, kiss me until you taste all the weed-flavoured pain on my tongue—and this time it won’t be an overdose. it will be resurrection.

i don’t know about the life i’m living outside these buses anymore.

i’m alone, going back to a home where i’m alone again. the world begins to blur away, and in this darkness there is a little bit of solace.

///

this time i’m alive as we skip past my stop—you don’t mind, do you? in this darkness i sit on your leather jacket and lean on your shoulder. i don’t know who you are or who i am, neither do i know where we’re going—maybe that’s why i’m here.

///

driver, you forgot to stop at my stop… did you?

///

or was i never here to begin with? so i ask another man, then another, and another, and it turns out i really was here. i departed somewhere far a while ago.

///

my room is cleaned again, but this isn’t my room or my craft. my mind can’t find its way even in sobriety—perhaps it’s too perfect. perfection, in your definition, is order. but disorder—how fucking perfect is the art of disorder.

///

i’m telling the woman in the mirror everything, but she only cries. why are you crying again? don’t you remember the last time you cried, what happened? this is who i am—mrs. nobody.

contrast is what gets you going, but it’s also enough to split you in half—held and loved the night before, alone and armored again.

you’re a walking paradox—living in a cinematic paradoxical life, aren’t you?

///

your life sounds cinematic, where the hero dies at the end and the heroine keeps looking for love in all the wrong places, anything to be held—anything to never find myself existing in days like these again.

///

so another dose i take and i’m seeing stars.

///

i still carry the day on my skin—the smell of rain in my hair, the bruise on my ankle, smeared mascara and chapped, ashy lips. somewhere on my vanity is my black dress—it still smells like him. a bittersweet reminder of the beautiful world that never stays, and that clock that ticks above, never sparing you.