Journey Into The Mirror

• Caitlin Webb, Grade 9
• Poetry
• 2009

Athena Blackwood was dishevelled, disappointed, delusional. Like her ravaged thoughts, the photos lay around her in a crumpled disarray. Tiny islands upon a turbulent sea, they floated, each drawing in her nervous glances. Her heartbeat escalating, she retrieved the photo closest to her, her stomach aching with loneliness.
This was how it had always been, she admitted bitterly to herself. Her constantly pondering her mother’s love for her as she was off somewhere else- with no hints to her whereabouts. And now she knew why. The photo that she was clutching featured her mother, smiling happily, a small dark haired child in her treacherous embrace.
Her hands shaking, Athena took the photo from the opposite side of her body. The photo was unbearably similar. Both girls in their mother arms- smiling ignorantly. Unaware that she belonged to someone else. A solitary tear trickled down her flushed cheek, clinging to her skin. She averted her eyes to the ceiling that was now cloaked with cobwebs as a result of her mother’s latest escape. Her watering eyes sought out the spider responsible for the mess. Struggling in the web was a small fly twitching with agony as the spider advanced upon it. Like her mother, the spider stood, a master of its web of deception...and she was the fly. Despite her quivering soul ravaged by the knowledge, she continued to look through the photos surrounding her. The images rolled by her, so like the ones documenting her own life yet so dissimilar also.
Shaking with rage that she thought she could not muster, Athena turned away from the photos of this stranger. Instead, she continued to rummage through the ornate silver box until she unearthed a thick pile of letters, discoloured from age. Holding them in her hands, she could envision her mother sitting in the dimly lit room reading them over and over. The letters, witnesses to her deception revealed the questions Athena had asked herself. Written from both hands, both bundles of letters pleaded for her to return, telling tales of childhoods from both families. From burrowing into the letters, amongst the lies that thrust themselves forth blatantly, she gleaned precious morsels of information regarding the family that lived in a parallel existence to her own. A collection of tears gathered in her eyes as she angled her frame back towards the photos. Her ivory hands began to arrange the photos chronologically in to separate columns, each depicting the lives of both the families. Knowing of the task that now lay before her, she reached for her largest backpack and packed the essentials she knew she would require for her journey. Scribbling her father a note, she then stood in the room and surveyed it with cynical amusement. Ironic that she had begun cleaning her mother’s room a desperate bid to capture her waning affection. A quest that had led her to the box that unveiled the truth behind her mother’s frequent absences. Athena Blackwood was dejected, derisive, dangerous.