She stood from the bath, gracefully slipped a robe on and looked into the mirror. The face she saw staring back was not her own. It had a wisp of a smile, a hint of vibrancy and a clarity of skin. The deeper and more sullen she sighed, the wider the reflection grinned. Uncertain, she stormed off.
As she descended the tremendous stairway, each step she took was one closer to the truth she finally had to face. She was alone. She had lost both her children, before they’d even lived half a decade combined, to a similar, yet unidentified, merciless disease. Her parents had cut her off years before. In the seven years during which her life had begun to unfold, she’d lost all friends; all traces of a social life.
The last straw was when her soul mate had left, what was, chronologically, months before but felt like an eternity of solitude. He had disappeared on a secret mission never to be seen or heard from again. Before receiving the news, she’d felt a gnawing nausea, double fold, somehow knowing in her heart that he wouldn’t return, and for another reason she couldn’t quite face yet.
During this time, she had built walls of concrete, and her normally sunny disposition had changed into a morbid form, surrounded by fibrils of misery and anguish each day of her life. She’d undergone a gross, painfully induced metamorphosis. It was a death on the inside for her, and she felt that her body was simply a vessel that bore gravitational weight but didn’t constitute her being. Whenever she looked down and tried to speak reassuringly, all she could hear was a lack of expression in her voice. Or rather, a complete indication of expression, but something she could not drown in for the sake of the new responsibility she was about to take on. She was, and would always remain, strong.
And months later, she had her bundles of joy. A boy and girl, just like the ones she’d loved and lost. Not that it wasn’t love at first sight before, but this time was different. It was different because with each glance she took at them, her chronic misery unraveled a bit more. It was a new day in her heart and soul, because she knew that each loss she’d endured had rightfully found its reincarnation.
Manenoz 