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No commentary on this one; I much like this image, and might return to this with some more detail.
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"The Girl in the Lake"
You don't know to use the word ritual, but that's what your trip to the lake is.
Every day you endure the words.
You're ugly.
You're stupid.
You're worthless.
So every afternoon in what you don't know to call a ritual but most certainly is you walk to the river.
The other you is waiting there, on the otherside of the water, looking sadly up at you, tears welling up in her eyes.
You turn your head, not able to look directly at her, but you see her there, watching you through the corner of her eyes which are yours.
And there at the river, in what you don't know to call a ritual, you pass along all the small cruelties. After all, there's not meant for you, not for meek, quiet, calm you. They're meant for the girl in the river.
You half-whisper:
"Why can't you be more like your brother?"
"You're useless."
"You're just like your mother."
She always does her part, in what you don't know to call a ritual, staying the whole time, as meek as you are, until you walk slowly away from the river.
You wonder where she goes when you're gone, what the world is like across the river, but you don't wonder for long. After all, you can return from the lake, quietly, to gather another day's worth of petty hatreds for the girl in the lake.
Until one day, in what you never knew to be a ritual, you blink and find yourself looking up, looking through the calm water, up at her face backlit by the sun and unreadable.
You feel the weight of all the petty cruelties you've cast into the water dragging you down and away, as she turns and walks away, looking as meek as you but hardened by years underwater.
You tell yourself that you'll meet her eyes when she returns, but you never get the chance.
You fade, reflecting nothing but the angry-red sun, pain wearing smooth like a river-stone,
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