Portrait of Another Self

by Mary Turkot

 

bangs cut straight across, I trace

my finger along—

jet black, flat

like a pin—her hair.

a little girl, 2003

caught behind glass,

plastered there

forever, the longer I stare

the harder it is to believe

she could be me.

 

because the glass in the mirror

frames a different face, and clearer

there’re scars on her surface

that weren’t there

before, marks on her skin,

sunspots from staying out too long

in summer, tens of “ten more minutes”

at the pool when she was six

or before waking at sixteen,

the year she lost—

well, that’s not really a loss

because she learned later

you can’t lose what you were taught.

 

maybe if I could find her somewhere,

this chubby cheeked girl

in the pink dress,

and maybe if I could know the hand she holds,

perpetually

caught like a snowflake, frozen

perfect

a piece of time, a slice

of never before seen

and never be back again,

a pressed flower—

her on his lap,

holding his hand,

that man

I never knew, never

could know

not in a million lifetimes.

 

who am I

then, if it depends

on that knowing?

the whos and whats

of where I come from—

well, maybe I just won’t find it.

 

this profile I see at night, right

before closing the door

to my bedroom, passing

the hall mirror and thinking

her?

after all these years?

this is what she became?

it makes me wonder.

 

well, she might have wounds that didn’t heal

quite right inside, the kind

that ache slow and subtle

and never really fade,

not all the way.

there’s blank film in her head

from back then,

the days she chose to

or had no choice but

to forget.

 

he’s dead.

but I’m not, and

so it seems to fit right when I say he’s her dad,

not mine,

because when I trace her jet black hair

hiding behind the picture frame,

it doesn’t feel the way my curls do,

and the hand he holds is too small to be mine,

and those eyes—

they haven’t seen what I’ve seen

and haven’t yet loved—

not the way I have.

they haven’t felt that.

 

so it’s easier to say

that for all she doesn’t know,

it is that she knows this—

the way it feels to have him hold her

and the sound of his voice

and the way the rough sleeve of his jacket

rubs her arm too hard

when he picks her up and swings her,

the smell of his breath—

it is that,

which makes her look more whole than I ever could.

 

Mary Turkot is a junior at Rutgers, majoring in English with a double minor in Creative Writing and Environmental Studies. You can usually find her somewhere in Voorhees Mall, with a laptop, a book, and probably coffee.