The Villain’s Mirror
Old voicemail hiss in the wires, voice like a lost child’s candle fighting the draft,
I replay your accusations on loop, the words pummel skin I swore was armor but turns brittle under aftermath,
This kitchen table’s stained with coffee rings and apologies I never poured, my fingerprints everywhere but the evidence runs deep–dirt never swept, just mashed into the grain,
On the back side of this mirror my face leans sharp, features warped by guilt’s heat–nose hooked, eyes sly, mouth a line drawn for confession but split by pride and aftermath.
I always believed in my own goodness, built excuses out of blueprints borrowed from therapy and childhood wounds,
Now I stare at your scrawl on the bathroom door, paint ripped by my anger, and see the sentences that make me the shadow creeping under your bed,
Your friends glance through me now, cold verdicts blooming in their eyes, a silent jury I cannot argue or sway–just guilty, written plain, each memory turned a weapon, each kindness re-framed as a mask or a trap.
I touch my jaw and remember shouting in the car, breath fogging glass with curses, steering wheel clutched as if rage could drive us out of ourselves,
You called me a storm in a paper city, and I wore that name like thunder, proud, only to watch it splinter the roof and flood the floors,
Now the silence after the fallout is colder than any storm; it smothers every future apology, swallows each imagined fix,
You’ve rewritten every chapter with new margins, and I am the claws and teeth, the trap that snapped, the door you lock twice now before sleep.
Photographs curdle on the shelf, red eyes and forced poses,
I study them for evidence of my decay–smiles too wide, posture bent as if bracing for the accusation I always denied,
Every dinner I made tastes bitter now, the memory of your frown when I salted the roast as if love could be seasoned back,
Yet here I am–villain, the shadow cast over your best intentions, the punchline to your wounded laugh, the knife’s reflection in the shine of every cup.
The urge to explain gnaws raw, but you’ve shut the book,
My letters come back unopened, my texts bounce off a wall built from your side of the story, bricks mortared in tears I caused,
Maybe in another world I was the hero, but in yours my footprints spell out every haunted room you escaped, and all the doors slam tight behind me.