Tethered

Sixteen || Mirror

{You All Over Me ~ Taylor Swift}

...And wasted time, lost tears, swore that I'd get out of here, but no amount of freedom gets you clean, I've still got you all over me...

----

It is the calling of the morning lark that rouses something within me. From a steady otherness in my mind, I return to my body and the searing ache in its weight. Something has changed since I left it. 

My head droops low, too heavy to hold steady, as I make my way for the door, my breath suffocating in these four walls, my voice long since destroyed from swallowing screams that sunk into the walls that only seem to taunt me. The silence of the once-bustling ocean of bodies that refused to hear me, has settled into a dead sea of sleeping bodies. The silence amplifies the thumping in my head and the moaning ache of my steadily bruising skin. My hands fumble for strength on the bending walls, their scratchy screams that threaten my silent escape, but none of the sleepy-shut eyes budge to glare at my movements, to question, to see the truth of what has become of me. 

And I retch. 

"All I have to do is make it outside", I slur to myself in half-shot whispers. Where are my shoes? My bag is clutched in a choking grasp, tight and white-knuckled in my hands. I am escaping an already forgotten moment, yet the stains and aches seem to linger past the fading, faltering memories. The aching lingers, washed all over me. 

And I retch. 

Too much to drink, that's all, I nod heavily. I swallow it down, vying for a breeze of the morning air, a cleansing breath to tell me I can make it home. I want to go home. I want to go back. Back to before it all went dark. Before...

"It's okay," I soothe the tears that fall without permission and I half expect the sob, the cry that doesn't come. I swallow it down. I swallow it down. 

And I retch. 

But the mirror in the hall, the passing shadow that echoes every limping motion catches my gaze. Her clothes are ripped. Her skin is a map of war, evidence of the siege that took place. The broken battle cry in her eyes shakes me as she catches sight of the reality. 

And there are questions I cannot yet answer, and there is nothing to be done, but to find the morning air, to cry and try to find what has been lost, or stolen, not in items but in memory, and in safety, and in something so small it is impossible to quite find the words which could accurately describe this nightmare. 

So I swallow it down, and crawl out of the dark, searching for the sight of the rising sun calling for me over the dark line of the horizon. And I walk. And walk. And walk. And I tell myself it is always the darkest before the dawn. 

----

    "Are you sure this is necessary?" I ask for what feels like the thousandth time. "I mean, in the grand scheme of things, surely training time should be better spent actually... You know... Training."

I am stood atop a podium in a small closet, surrounded by draped fabrics of all colours and textures, with only a small light hanging above my head, and a three-angled floor length mirror before me. The sight of three more images of me, staring back in the mirror leave the room feeling even tighter than before.