reflection
what are you supposed to do
when you look into the mirror
and the person staring back isn’t you?
the first thing, i suppose,
would be to check that it is a real mirror
do you know what you are looking at?
the second thing, i think,
would be to check another mirror
who are you there?
the instructions i have stop after number two
they don’t tell me what to do if i’m not in the second mirror
or the third or fourth or fifth
all my mirrors show a different person
and i’m no longer sure which one is me
background noise
in the dark i hated the silence
i couldn’t stand the weight of it
closing in on me
the semi-physical feeling pressing around me
i spent all night praying for it to leave
in the day i miss it
i can’t stand the noises
i find myself wishing for them to leave so
i can go back to feeling like
i’m the only person who
has ever been alive
untitled
i have never understood why
people always talk about break ups with a lover
and never the splitting apart of friends
i know
i’ve never really let myself fall in love
so i can’t say how that feels
but i have carelessly lost myself to friends
thinking that friendship lasts
it was my mistake
to think that they would stay
as if people don’t fall apart
from no longer fitting together
it’s only said about lovers
why would it be true for friends too?
i can’t help giving too much of myself to people
while also giving them nothing
would i want to stop
if i knew how?
suffocation
i have been obsessed with drowning lately
drowning in emotions
drowning in silence
drowning in nothingness
i think it’s the overwhelming part
surrounded by so much of one thing that
it suffocates you
in a way you didn’t think it could
maybe drowning and suffocating are opposite things
one you fall too much into something
until you can’t breathe; the
other losing too much air
until you die
but whether you drown in yourself
or don’t have enough of yourself
you lose either way
Biographical Note: Katherine Lim is a junior at Vassar College. She is an English and Italian double major who loves reading fantasy and contemporary young adult novels, as well as writing prose and poetry. Her work has been featured in Vassar’s Asian and Asian American magazine, Portrait, and she has been an editor for them for three years.