Eliot

5

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞-𝐄𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐲: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐲 𝐈𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐌𝐞 They said I was born backwards. That I cried before I opened my mouth, that the sky blinked at me like a broken television and the doctor swore he felt a chill in the birthing room. Mother named me Eliot because it sounded like an afterthought, a name almost spelled in reverse, palindromic in its guilt. The rest is harder to explain. I speak to a mirror that won’t break, where a boy lives who wears my face like a borrowed suit. He listens as I unravel, voice hollow as a club beat lost in fog, telling stories I’m not sure I lived. Sometimes I try to shatter him, but the glass hums and holds. My memories warp like cassette tape left in sun. I no longer write, only murmur to a reflection that’s more real than I am. Over time, I’ve disappeared into background noise, a breath behind glass, a shadow mimicking form, fading not with impact but with style. Like a synthline drifting into static. Like grey. They’re here again. The ones who named me. My parents. A visit. Their voices trail chocolate and old wallpaper. My wife baked the same cake, same shape, same weight, but the air hums wrong today. Something behind their smiles twitches. I sit, I echo, I pass the sugar like memory. No one says it, but I think the walls remember more than we do...