cubic cartilage

One, two, -

Desire holds her heart captive. It has bound her in chains of longing, and they are as unbreakable as her emptiness is unending. It bounces in her thoughts and shakes around her focus, until it is too late whatever homework or chore she was supposed to have finished.

Everything in their shared room slowly acquires a thin layer of dust, and she does not let her mother in to wash her sheets. She makes both beds each morning, so that no one will know she does not sleep in her own.

The big mirror in the bathroom swallows her whole each morning. Her own face, her hair, her skin; they all compose a phantom that is searing into her, and her whole family knows it. Her own father cannot stand to make eye contact with her anymore, and she can’t blame him for it.

She starts to brush her teeth at school. (Their mirrors are smaller and foggier, and no one will bother her in the big stall if she needs to cry.) But, then again, what if dental hygiene is a big conspiracy? So many other things are.

Once, Griffin would have made a face, and told her she was disgusting and wasn’t allowed back in their room till she flossed and brushed and rinsed, because her breath could be smelt from ten feet away.

But, until Gail hears that in her ears and not her head, it is not a priority. Maybe bad breath will get people to stop giving her pitying gazes at school.

Nightfall does not bother her, until she realizes that she used to hear breathing coming from the other bed, and now there is just silence, silence, silence. It pierces her, just like an arrow from a medieval fantasy story. (Can imaginary wounds become infected?)

No, what hurts the most is dinner and breakfast and lunch, and how there is one chair around their large kitchen table that has not been sat in for nearly a month. What hurts more than the silence of her room is the lapsing silence of her big brother and the capricious, simmering temper of her younger one.

(He is Griffin’s triplet, too, she knows, but Griffin is her identical twin, and somehow, that seems a little different.)

It stings when her oldest sister comes by her bedroom for a Sisters’ Sleepover, and has accidentally made three bowls of popcorn instead of two. (They both know it really isn’t a Sisters’ Sleepover if one of their own is missing.)

She clings to the old stuffed animals that decorate their beds.

She decides the taste of mint toothpaste isn’t so bad as long as she doesn’t swallow it.

She buys three cupcakes in the lunchline, and knits three scarves when fall comes, because Griffin would still want one.

She hoards the lemon-scented cleaning spray and paper towels one day, because Griffin is going to pitch a fit when she sees the disorder of their seashell collection.

There is an ache inside of her, a hole that is never going to be filled up, as long as the whereabouts of her mythically-named sister stay just a myth. It fills up her insides, and bubbles over, and leaves room for nothing else. It is nothing, and yet it is everything, because it rules how she walks and who she talks to and what she does.

Secrets and stories and sorrows build up her inside her like a brick wall, and one day, her better half will come back, and she will be able to pour them out and fix herself. She cannot live without the one face that can mirror hers without a mirror. But living is overrated, and she can survive like this just fine, as long as a freckled face and a frazzled laugh will one day grace her life again.

(Because she has to.)

One, two, three.