Tale of Narcissus

Tell me, Narcissus, is there a limit to your deceit? You lie, and you crawl, carrying with yourself the humility of a saint and the devotion of a shrine. You focus on your flaws, zooming in on the bump of your nose and the plaque on your teeth, yet you stare at the portraits— yours for hours to no end. They find their way in old letters, journal entries, wallpapers.

O Narcissus, tell the truth. Do you hate yourself truly, or is it another farce to be accepted as human? You'd rather cover yourself in bandages than go out with a bare face. Nakedness always discomforted you. Or perhaps not. You stand for hours, staring at your body in the mirror— the heaviness of your breasts, the curve of your waist—and you look for ways that a man might hold them. 

You carry your body as a burden, awkward and heavy, but you find ways in which they might appeal to others, and you polish them and you conceal the flaws, and you sometimes look pretty. But O Narcissus, do you really think that, or is it yet another lie?

You often think about that moment—a knife to your skin and the fear that you felt. You find yourself thinking if that was ever real, or did you make it up? O narcissus, would you rather mutilate yourself than talk about how you felt that night?

You continue for hours— journaling daily grief in a ratty notebook or a midnight conversation but thinking about death makes you smile. You live in constant fear that you've never truly loved anyone to truly grieve them, and you hope that you disguise it well enough that no one sees inside. Tell the truth, Narcissus. Do you think the veil works, or no one's ever really cared enough to pry?

You say you'd rather be the bride of death before you marry a guy, but didn't you dream about strong, manly hands touching your body, your lips, your thighs. So did you lie then, Narcissus, when you told that woman you loved her but couldn't be her wife?

Is anything that you say true— pure and innocent— or is it all a lie? Won't you let me know, Narcissus? After all, I'm you, aren't I?