The Fluorescent Version

The bathroom at work has lights that aren't human.

Fluorescent, I guess, the kind that makes you look

like you're already dead,

like you're a specimen,

like your body is something to be studied

under the right conditions.

I washed my hands yesterday and looked up—

didn't mean to, just caught myself in the mirror—

and I didn't recognize the person looking back.

The collarbone was sharp.

Too sharp. Like it was trying to get out.

The shadows under my cheekbones were

actual shadows, actual hollows,

not the soft suggestion of age

but the clinical reality of it,

the evidence

stark against the white light.

I looked sick.

Not tired. Sick.

Like someone who'd been in bed for weeks,

like someone whose body was already

giving up.

I know this person doesn't exist in normal light.

In the morning, in my apartment,

I look like myself.

Tired, maybe. Older, sure.

But recognizable.

But under those lights,

in that bathroom,

I'm a different version of myself,

and I'm terrified that this is the real one,

that everyone else is just being polite,

that what I see in the mirror at home

is the lie,

and what I saw in that bathroom

was the truth.

I'm going to stop using that mirror.

I'm going to wash my hands

in the bathroom on the other floor,

the one with the window,

the one with actual light.

Because I can't afford to see myself like that

every day.

I can't afford to know

what I look like under the wrong conditions.