03 Moon Three: The Mirror That Wouldn’t Speak

from Three Moons in My Ribcage

By the time the third moon began to stir, I had already learned silence.
Not the peaceful kind. Not the kind found in libraries or prayer.
The silence that waits behind mirrors. The kind that watches.
That judges. That listens only to see who flinches first.

I was fourteen when I stopped recognising my reflection.
Not suddenly. Not theatrically.
The change was patient. Surgical. Precise.
I would catch myself blinking when I knew I hadn’t.
Tilting my head in photos I remembered standing straight in.
Smiling in the wrong direction.

Something else was living behind the glass.
Something learning how to be me.
It studied well. It mimicked.
But its eyes were always too still.
Too rehearsed.

The third moon nested quietly in my throat.
Not pulsing. Not hungry. Just present.
A weight behind the voice. A tension in the name.
When I said “I”, it winced.
When others said “you”, it turned its face away.
It did not want to be known.
It wanted to divide.

I began to keep secrets from myself.
Left notebooks half-filled, pages torn out.
Recorded dreams I could not have dreamt.
Woke up with ink on my fingers,
but no memory of the pen.

The mirror watched. Always.
And always it refused to answer.
I asked it who I was becoming.
It said nothing.
I asked it what I had buried.
It cracked slightly, but did not break.

I learned to wear masks that fit too well.
Smile here. Nod there.
Laugh at the joke even when it tastes like rust.
The others called it growing up.
I called it erasure.
A slow, methodical erosion of what I was
to make room for what I was expected to be.

The third moon was patient.
It didn’t scream like the first.
It didn’t scratch like the second.
It simply held the mirror still
and waited for me to look long enough to forget
which face was mine.

I found comfort in dissonance.
In walking down hallways and not recognising my own voice.
In writing words I didn’t believe
just to see if they would rot on the page.
Some did. Some bloomed into mouths.
Some sang lullabies I had heard in the womb.

That was when I knew.
I had never been one person.
I was a theatre. A host. A set of doors
each locked from the inside, each hiding a different scream.

And the third moon loved me for that.
Not because I was broken,
but because I had learned to live as a constellation of fractures.
Because I stopped searching for wholeness
and began feeding the mirror pieces of myself
just to see which ones it would keep.

Now when I pass a mirror, I nod.
I do not wave. I do not smile.
I acknowledge.
Because it has seen all the versions I have worn.
And it has never betrayed me by pretending they were the same.

The third moon does not watch anymore.
It waits.
And I wait with it.
For the final face.
The one none of us will recognise.