By Kieran Anil Rogers
Didn’t smash it.
Didn’t need to.
There was nothing to break.
Frame nailed up like a threat.
Where the glass should’ve been — dust, old breath, a fly once.
Mum said stand still,
but I was already vanishing.
Tried posture.
Tried prayer.
Tried eyeliner once.
Then boots.
Then bruises.
Then nothing.
Called myself she till the sound itched.
Wore boy like a borrowed coat, two sizes wrong.
Choked on both.
Tried to see me in bus windows.
Shopfronts.
His sunglasses when he said my name wrong.
Only thing looking back was air,
a bit of steam,
a maybe.
Doctor asked if I’d ever felt real.
Laughed so hard my chest rattled.
Felt more real then than at my baptism.
More than first kiss,
first punch,
first time I didn’t flinch.
Never saw myself — only rules.
How to sit, how to speak, how to lower your voice
like a curtain.
Came home once, hair cut wrong,
dad said Jesus Christ.
Didn’t correct him.
Let the silence hang like meat.
Stopped looking.
Frame’s still there.
No glass, never was.
But some days
I walk past it and don’t duck.
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Not to find yourself —
just to stop running from the space
where you might be.
(Him)
Kept my eyes down.
Not shyness.
Survival.
In our bathroom,
the mirror steamed up quicker than my voice.
Used to trace shapes in the fog —
something to believe in,
just long enough to wipe away.
Didn’t see a boy.
Didn’t see a girl.
Saw elbows, teeth,
things I didn’t ask for.
Not once.
Never saw what others saw.
They said strong jaw.
Said lad.
Said you’ll grow into it.
Like manhood was a coat I’d one day fill.
Like I hadn’t already drowned in it.
Couldn’t cry.
Tried once — at Nan’s funeral —
mum said not here, love.
Dad didn’t look up.
Didn’t need to.
His silence snapped like bone.
I wore my body like a plaster cast.
Rigid.
Falsely healed.
Tight in the wrong places.
The mirror told lies,
but polite ones.
Ones I could tuck my shirt into.
Teachers liked me.
Said I was well-behaved.
Didn’t ask why I clenched my fists to keep still.
Didn’t see I flinched at my own name.
One day
I stopped looking.
Just combed the parting.
Tucked the rage.
Walked into the world like I chose it.
But I didn’t.
I just obeyed it.
Now the frame’s still there.
Old, tilted,
slightly warped from years of steam.
Still no glass.
Still no reflection.
Just me,
shaving shadows off a face
I never wanted to grow into.