This is how we live then, walking in circles among the daffodils, their oddly human faces drooping at the riverbank. This is what we do, repeating back what is said to us, like we learned to do in psych class. So it sounds like things are hard for you right now, right now, we say, our voices are your voice bouncing back across the river, across the mountain range. We are so sad we need another word for it, beyond sorrow, beyond grief, but we push that back and focus on what you're saying because maybe that will be more interesting, and if you don't ask about us then we don't have to think about it; we're not beyond noticing it's a form of co-dependence. There was a time when we talked so much we got on other people's nerves but in your presence we are reduced to repetition, and you can only hear us say the words you say, because it's not in your nature to listen to us. So like our sisters the mirrors we are not making much, we are mostly reflecting, and what we are mostly reflecting is you though we try to tilt and lilt at a certain angle so you only see and hear what you want, the things you like about yourself, and every time you look at us or listen to us you fall a little more in love and for a second we get to imagine you're falling in love with us and that's about as close as it gets but that's closer than it gets anywhere else so we take it. Sometimes it sounds like we're singing but it's how we cry, and our tears tangle in our throats and come out sounding almost like laughter. The heat of our passion meets the coldness of your feeling; we burn for you and yet we are never consumed. It's just a constant hot longing in the cold air and the pain defines us more than our existence, we are colored in flames outside of the lines. Caravaggio came and captured some part of your beauty, the way your hair tucked behind your ear, and he left us out of the picture but then that's hardly a surprise: out of sight out of mind, as they say, out of yours out of mine. May I die before what's mine is yours, you shout at us, and we answer: what's mine is yours, is yours. 

Another word for you is narcissus. Another word for us is echo. Nothing ever changes, changes, changes. 

It is lodged in her back somewhere between one vertebra and another, a small thing, sharp. It doesn't hurt at all unless it does, a slight movement forward and she feels it. The reaction is, as most are, involuntary: a gasp, wetness in the eyes; the need to do anything at all to not feel it again. She drinks to quench the fire it burns through her, the flames that lick at her heart, she drinks a river and there is nothing more to drink and still it hurts. This sharp… who put this in her? Why is it here? She cranes her neck around but it is just out of her sight, it is just beyond where her fingers can reach, that one spot, like kissing your elbow, unreachable. A man comes to tell her to stop screaming and she eats him whole and still it hurts, it is an endless pain except when she doesn't feel it at all. Days go by and she can forget it entirely, it's nothing, it never was. She even imagines that she was just feeling someone else's pain, which is a logical risk of being a sorceress, except then she reaches out in a particular way to take a specific thing that belongs to her and there it is again, the knife in her spine that twists with grief, and she is crying again until the whole village shakes with her sobs. Another man comes to tell her to try to hold it together and she swallows him before he can finish his sentence. Men. Meanwhile she is trying to do her job though it's clear that her pain has driven the less devoted customers away. This one needs a love potion; this one wants to stay up all night talking without saying a word about the actual problem. This one wants nothing except to be wanted, a mobius band of longing that she treats with alcohol and a song about shoes that can leave and don't. And still her back is sharp with anguish, the mirror won't show her what it is, and now when her fingers come close the pain is such that she can't even describe it without weeping. This is getting ridiculous. Another man comes, another, they are asking questions but it is only for themselves, what they want, she is interesting to them only in terms of what she can give them and she eats them, a pile of bones she spits at her feet the only remains. One day some day someone will come and ask her the right question, one day some day someone. Put arms around her, hold her gently, brush the tears from her cheeks, pull the thorn from her back. A thorn! Yes, that is all it is, like all horrible things it only feels big, but it is smaller than a splinter. They will pull the thorn out, lick the blood from the tip, put it in a jar with other things that used to scare her. They will laugh together. That will come later, and she will be so grateful she will give back the river. She will give back the men and call them warriors rather than bores. It's in the story, it's bound to happen. But not yet; today she mutters spells and wails, wraps her arms around herself and tries to keep her hands on grace, hopes. 

You're standing in a garden, abandoned since that rainstorm, fixed in place. The world grows around you. Nobody remembers that you were there, nobody knows what you were working on, nobody cares, or has cared for years, other than you. You still care, though, so you spend the days watching the flowers grow and wishing for the thing that would free you up to return to what you were doing, to what you were made to do. Not so much a calling as a design.

One day some people come to your garden, gaze at you in wonder and surprise. The hollow sounds you make as they bang against you. You marvel at their soft bones, soft tissue, you can't even imagine what it would be like to be so vulnerable. They give you the first thing you ask for, the only thing you actually need, and you're free again. At least for a little while you are ready to go back to what you were doing before your unfortunate circumstances. But now they are telling you that something is still wrong with you. You're empty inside, they say, you don't have anything inside to give. This is not true, and anybody who was really paying attention would know this but they take you at surface value and they can't see what they think you should have, these people with their soft skin and their pumping hearts. You know it is an important thing to have, and they say you don't have it, and you believe them.

There are advantages to you. You don't burn the way they do; anger frightens you but it can't hurt you, similarly shame and jealousy. You cry easily and this hurts you in myriad ways, but tears are how the body says what the mouth cannot. Other than the ability to fiercely defend your friends you don't experience much passion and the only damage you sustain are a few dents that could be knocked out if you cared. You can remember when you were young and shiny but it doesn't seem to bother you that you aren't any more. There's just the one thing you need and the other thing you want because you've been told you don't have it.

Hold out your hand and they will fill it with velvet and sawdust only. You will be no different; you already had what they told you that you lack. It's more important to remember to ask for what you need, ask again, ask until someone understands. Otherwise you will find yourself back in that garden, rusting in place, useless to everyone.