The eyes of the child in the photograph, are they my own?
Surrounded as I am now, I look so alone:
Inside myself, and you have no way in.
Now I wish I could cry, but I don’t know where to begin.
I’m sure that I was alive long before,
And I was a child: the child that nobody saw.
I’m sure I remember being somebody but me,
Lost in this world: a world that I could not see.
Now I’m lost in myself, and I don’t even know who that is:
I’m locked up inside, in a place where I am not missed.
I look in the mirror and I wonder, why
Am I still the child behind those empty eyes?
Feelings atrophy themselves away.
A ghost of the girl that to you prayed;
A ghost of the girl that came to know,
Nobody heard her crying so.
Colour drains itself from light.
I stare at the day and see just night.
I dream of a day when it’s alright,
And of someone who’ll hold me tight.
The eyes of the lie in the photograph, are they my own?
In her place my tumour of a mind has grown:
Inside her cells; inside her skin.
Now I wish this were done, but I am yet to begin.
I’m sure that I wasn’t like this long before;
That I was a child: the child that nobody saw.
I’m sure I resemble somebody that used to be me,
Lost in this self: a self I’m unable to be.
Now I’m here in my mind and I don’t even know I exist.
I’m locked up inside, in a place where I am not missed.
I look in the mirror and I wonder, why
Did the girl that stares back at me really have to die?
Author notes
The photograph that I had in mind when writing this poem is one of me, about age six. My sister and I were playing in a park when a man came up to my mother and asked if she minded if he took a photograph of me (nothing weird). The picture shows me in black and white playing with a bike wheel that had been turned into a feature in the playground. I am shown through the spokes of the wheel. I'm not, as one would expect during play, showing any joy, but rather staring blankly into the lens. The imagery invoked is of an invisible wall between myself and the viewer, or perhaps even the bars of a prison cell reflected in the everyday play of a child. These images reflect my recurrent feelings of being alone even (or rather, especially) when surrounded by people, or being a prisoner in a human body although not really feeling like I belong within humanity.
In the poem, I ask several times whether that child is really me. The photograph was taken just after an incident of abuse which caused me to dissociate to the point of barely even talking to people for many months afterwards, and to still dissociate from myself today while in most interpersonal situations. My mother described me as being like a zombie, just not there at all. I often wonder whether, had it not happened, I would have been able to better overcome my Asperger's syndrome by not having missed out on a large amount of social interaction during that period. Could I have really been the human girl that I see in the mirror?
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