Reflect, it can mean think, to look upon, or mirroring. Looking at your reflection.
For a long time I tried not to look in the mirror, never wanting to see the reality it would reflect back at me. The tired eyes, the flat, empty stomach. My bowed skeleton, with twisted legs and bent arms and twisted fingers. The skeleton in the body that I will always wonder if it was too blame for their death.
Most people don’t notice these deformities, or are too polite to comment, but I do, once you see it you can’t un see it. I cannot un-see the twists in my joints. As I cannot un-feel the pain it causes.
I could reflect on how far I’ve come, on what I have learnt in the last 8 months, but I wouldn’t know what to say. What do you say about something like this.
I’ve been trying since December and I’m still not sure how to express it.
I could reflect on the pain, but why? It hurts because it mattered. Because Emmet matters to me.
I could reflect on what I have learnt, I could reflect on how this is a lesson I would rather not have learnt, but I cannot un-love them, un-want them, and without Emmet I would not have learnt those lessons.
I would rather reflect on the love, but all love for them is bittersweet. Both heightened and tainted by absence.