body double shadow puppet
by Trynne Delaney
While I lay in bed for the seventh day, only rising to shit and piss, eat, drink, and attend to the very most essential animal functions, I became aware of the mirror. It was my ex’s idea to install it there, an obelisk of a thing that took up half the wall, where we could see ourselves on the bed. She loved a mirror shot, the danger that comes with being perceived from many angles made her horny. Myself, I preferred to turn my back to my reflection, to perform only for a live audience so that any details of my performance might be forgotten. And besides, I was never horny, I could only pretend it. Our preferences were clues as to why she believed herself to be a filmmaker and I believed myself to be a performer, though both of us had yet to be paid for any work that might make those titles official. Even after she left, almost a year ago now, I kept my back to the mirror, slept on the far side of the bed. Now and then I’d use it to pop a pimple or trim under my arms when the hair got too long. But I made a point of avoiding my own eyes and always had sex with the lights off and the curtains drawn so that I could fully embrace my own shame.
Now, though, as I lay here on the seventh day, something bright flitted across the mirror and my gaze was finally drawn to that reflected other-world. I turned my head, slowly, slowly, to face the mirror. At first, I could only see the fuzzy mess of my undone hair. I thought the movement might’ve been a bird or a mouse, both had made their way into the apartment before, and I’d let them live, so there was a chance they might feel welcome to return. With a heavy arm I reached to press my hair back, away from my cool forehead. I did not have a fever, though my head was so hot inside it ached, and the other hand, the one that now greeted me in the mirror, found its way to waving.
When I try, I cannot remember what it feels like to be fully awake. In general, I cannot remember. I have memories but if I overreach they become fuzzy, dank things that puff into the air like spores when I try to touch them. I do not remember that trip we took to the Maritimes. Yesterday I could not quite remember the sound of my mother’s laugh. I forget to remember to take the meat out of the freezer, to pay my rent. I forget my train of thought. I forget my age; I hold my own hand to cross the street, if I must cross the street. I do not even remember the first day I was sick. If I could remember, everything would be so much easier. This entire life of mine might have the sort of before and after narrative that sells well.
My sheets were fresh, I’d changed them last night with the help of my brother who came to visit once a week. It’s possible that’s why I slept so long, for almost eighteen uninterrupted hours. It was the setting sun that woke me. It reflected off the walls in golden shards, danced across the overgrown cactus, and fell into my palm like money. I listened to the buzz of circulation returning to my extremities—let sensation begin to really swell—before lifting myself up to a seat with three compacted pillows behind me. I waved back at the hand and it waved back at me. I reached forward, let my organs accordion out as my shoulder carried the weight of my hand and five fingers. The hand, my hand, reached as well, not to touch, I don’t think either of our hands wanted to touch, not yet, but we did want to feel the space of the air. My heart raced against itself fast, then. I don’t remember if I was scared. I think I was excited. It had been so long since I’d had any good company.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do anything, I had to remind myself. Just that anything had meant something very different to me only a year ago. To others the onset of my illness felt abrupt. They did not understand my continued absence and I no longer cared to understand their not understanding. My truth, which echoed in the cave of my solitude, was that the onset was gradual. I could not describe its day to day, the constant presence of what I called the other part of pain, the perpetual lethargy that dogged me. And so there was no answer for this missing body and mind, no memory of a before. Change changes every moment that precedes it, and what follows is also change.
I say this now. At other points, my racing heart was sure this illness was a consequence of biblical significance—the punishment for gluttony and my gluttony for punishment melded together into a theory that I had simply wanted too much. I’d shaken too many hands and one of them had been the devil’s. I’d spoken or laughed too loud and cracked the pavement open to hell. I’d lied to everyone about this body, what was simmering beneath my skin.
This was an ungenerous way of living with myself, I see that now. But I cannot shake the sense that this body was always the issue, its unruliness at the very core of its existence. This was supposed to happen; I was always supposed to stop.
It happened like this, over and over again: I could not. I simply could not. I couldn’t, really. I couldn’t. I could not. And then: what if I could? And I would. And then I could no longer. I simply could not. I could not. I would return to bed.
When the sun rose again I turned my head back towards the mirror. There was the hand again, reached high and open this time, like noon. I was extra heavy today and so I didn't try to reach. My eyelids slow blinked towards a semblance of clarity, and their other hand and arm reached towards the noon hand and they clasped each other before the other hand traced down the noon arm, which stretched gradually to 2:00 p.m.
It made me nauseous. To think of such a long trailing touch over one’s own warm skin. Their skin looked as soft as my own was, browned the way mine usually was in the summer. I could almost feel the tingle of cells reaching up to the UV—it made me so sick. My mouth flooded with watery saliva. The room began to spin. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again it was rush hour. Cars were honking on the busy street that adjoined mine. At some point I had turned so that my back was to the mirror. I could almost see the dust and gasoline in the air, particulate matter moving through the low rays of sunset. I was sweaty and hungry and I needed to move if only to prove to myself that I still could. So, I moved, I wrestled the sheets to the ground, stood, and came face to face with myself in the mirror.
This time, we caught each other’s gaze. I liked the way they looked at me. The evening light made all the difference, how it moved over their chest as it rose and fell, an empty smooth hill. Our pulses were aligned, our jugulars synched, I leaned forward, as they did, to futilely finger-curl a stray piece of hair. We locked eyes and held tight, our pupils clenched in focus. I began to think I was frightened or maybe I’d been standing too long. They were not frightened. They smiled with a kindness that felt like an offered seat. I knew then that this body wanted to befriend me, and suddenly I was sure that I could befriend them too, that their performance was for me, and I wanted it.
*
Across the city, in another time, I was realizing that this wasn’t for me. Not the concrete, not the tall buildings, not the noise. Definitely not the constant rushed movement, the relentless hurrying, even the leaves bustling to the ground in fall. I had just graduated university with a bachelor’s in performing arts and was becoming used to unemployment. At that moment, in my old neighbourhood which was full of chic white young professionals, I was not quite alone but I thought that I was. It was the beginning of my being alone but it was not yet all-consuming. My partner stood beside me, then. We’d just exited a wine bar where we’d split a bottle of orange wine and our ankles wobbled. Neither of us usually drank. In my memory it must have been a special occasion. On our table there was a bouquet that pretended its rustic-ness well. Back then, I was obsessed with mastering the art of illusion, I was thinking of going to magician’s school. So, when I knew she was distracted by my beauty, the way my curls fell, then shiny and soft, well past my nipples, I made the flowers disappear.
I had no reason to believe my magic trick would work, but I did believe it. We walked to the park and sat beneath a tree that dropped withered pink blossoms onto our heads. She kissed me and my throat caught. I could already feel myself returning to the reign of gravity, my heart heavier than ever. She pulled away and I pretended to laugh, then pulled the flowers from my sleeve. She did not smile when I held them out and told her about my body, how it needed to change for the world to continue turning. On her face there was no mask, no illusion to distract, no reflection of my own feelings. She did not want change or distraction. In her mind we’d already arrived and now I was describing leaving. I could feel my head heating up. I had not understood until that moment how good I’d gotten at sleight of hand.
*
After that, I got uglier and uglier. Worse and worse, every part of me. My skin grew dull and dry. I did not have energy to lotion. I re-metabolized the muscle mass I’d grown. My fingernails grew brittle and cracked and my face became unfriendly from lack of smiling.
When I could see myself in the mirror, this new body was distressing to me. I hadn’t wanted to look the way I looked but I also didn’t want to look the way I looked now, all mealy and green, mossy at the mouth. But now, this other appeared in the mirror,and they looked exactly like me, but not. I dreamt of emulating their hands as they touched, reached, stretched, and my stomach settled into desire.
At night I woke in a puddle of my own sweat, not an uncommon experience, and watched the headlights painting patterns on the canvas of the ceiling. The light trailed across my retinas, imprinting for too long, leaving impressions my subconscious might have edited out in the past. Once a concerning symptom, I now enjoyed this disturbance to my field of vision. It reminded me of how I saw in early childhood, with an honest poetry, a making of meaning that was mythic and strange—I could believe in anything that was shown to me. Whatever shone and whatever created the shadow not yet separated.
Like me, the body in the mirror could not sleep. They had turned on a lamp, which created a low yellow pool of light on the opposite wall of my room. I watched their shadow pace across that yellow frame, their body stretched long and then distorted, bent in odd positions as they turned and walked the opposite way in the frame. How often were they awake when I was not? How many times had I slept through their pacing? Eventually they stopped and sat in front of the mirror, gazing into the dark of my room or their own eyes. Then they raised their hands and made a dog with clasped palms so that the ears and eyes could move around expressively. When they opened their mouth I barked, I yapped, I growled. And when the moon passed across the screen of my window I howled. My downstairs neighbour banged against their ceiling, making noise for quiet. I felt no shame, I howled louder. And then it was dawn and I could not keep howling. I fell back asleep.
When I woke again, I was already standing in front of the mirror. I could not remember leaving my bed. I peered into the frame. From every angle I stood in front of the mirror, our rooms were identical, except for our bodies, which were similar enough, if only I could get a closer look to really be able to tell the difference, if only I could appear to myself to distinguish whether the difference was a reflection of my desire or my desire itself, fulfilled in some other time and place. If I had made a friendship with this body or the other it would have to wait on the other side of this bed, until I could roll over and reach it, touch our palms together and tug of war each other to this side of the mirror or that, or even, if I could reach for the frame, lift it up, and shatter it completely.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tkaronto (Toronto). They are the author of the half-drowned (winner of the QWF First Book Prize) and A House Unsettled. Recently, they’ve begun work on a poetic project about the space between desire and departure. In their spare time they like to garden.
trynnedelaney.com
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