Shattered Self-Portraits in the Process of Restoration
- Shattered Self-Portraits in the Process of Restoration
Emily Townsend is a graduate student in English at Stephen F. Austin State University. Her works have appeared in Superstition Review, Thoughtful Dog, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Santa Clara Review, cahoodaloodaling, Watershed Review, The Coachella Review, The Coil, and others. A 2017 AWP Intro Journals Award nominee, she is currently working on a collection of essays in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Footnotes
1+6. You lose your grip on the handle of a purple mirror in your childhood bathroom. As it hits the ground, all the splinters of superstitions you believed at age seven burst to truth: you will become accustomed to seven years of bad luck.
2. It is neither a fact nor fabrication that I am supposed to be on this planet, at this time, in this body, with all of these fraudulent interests and bold passions embroidered in your brain. Sometimes I wonder if I should be someone else's mind, the mind of a tired surgeon in Shanghai, a homeless person in Brooklyn, a premature child in the dusk of Perth. I didn't ask to be your home when you didn't ask to be born.
3. Post-divorce, your father moves 2,081 miles from your first house in Issaquah, Washington, to Mansfield, Texas. Your mother and new stepfather do not like this transfer. They do everything they can to make sure you and your two brothers rarely see your father. Later, you resent your mother for that.
4. George Ezra: "My mistakes land like embers on your tongue."
5. Your stepfather verbally abuses you whenever you mess up. You hide in the closet until your mother finds you beneath winter coats that no one ever wears. She tells you that you can't keep running away every time he upsets you. You tell her she needs to leave him. She leaves you alone.
6. In a letter to your best friend during your second year of college, you write, "You are so lucky to be surrounded by people who love you."
7*3. You're fourteen when yet another handheld mirror fractures on the ground of your bathroom. You hide the glass in the trash. You discard your tears in the shower.
8. 75% of glass ends up in landfills. 25% ends up cutting lifelines in the atria of your heart.
9. There are seven mirrors in your mother's house.
10. Document found in a shoebox of letters in Marissa Whitaker's closet, dated 9/17/15: "I thought I was getting better. But every day I think about how happy I could be. I compare my life with others in Seattle, and I feel like I'm wasting every breath here. It should be me at UW, taking pictures of my friends in coffee shops, buying flowers from Pike's Market to perk up my dorm. I wouldn't care how tiny my room would be because it'd mean I was finally home. I was happy again. I'm not trying to be ungrateful about school, but when my emotions and my heart are so completely separated from my body, I can't help but be sad."
11. I choose to remember what you most want to forget.
12. David Gray: "But as it unfolds / as it all unwinds / remember that your soul is the one thing / you can't compromise."
13. When people used water as their mirror, they looked into the ripples to see their fates. If the image was distorted, the viewer would die. The beliefs changed as the mirror changed form. If the mirror was broken so was the soul, and it was a sure sign of a person's death.13.1
13.1. It's terribly lonely being the only kid in elementary school who does not have friends.
14+21. Not moving right away has been your biggest failure. Not chasing happiness has been your biggest disappointment. For the first two years of college, you have a scheduled breakdown when Seattle crosses your mind. The campus seems enormous when you walk alone to your dorm. You have to accept that you will be...
