Work Text:
You are not born in any sense of the word. Nor are you created in the way you would imagine a sculptor would dig their fingers in the grove of your cheeks. You simply are, one day, and you look down at yourself, and up at yourself, and you come into being.
The world is bright, and the floor is cold, and you are smaller than you thought you would be, says you to yourself, as you follow along, hand gripped tightly on the back of your cape. Your shirt falls past your knees. How old are you again, you ask, and you say to yourself, you are six. You have no metric for six. You stick your fingers - and a stick with a mirror - into your mouth. You pull your hair from your eyes. You look at your reflection. You pull a red needle out from your arm.
You are a prosthesis, you tell you, although you don’t know what you mean. You are one of many, and one of itself. You are many things, like fascinating, and intriguing, and an opportunity.
There are many yous in the cobweb of reflections. You that drags around the cart of broken machine parts that you can't help but follow the line of. You that teaches you how to read. You that always pick you up in the cloak you remember clinging to when you first became you.
You are all of you, and all of them, and all of you.
One of you - behind you - laughs. You say, “aw, I thought we never wanted kids!”
You drag your hand through your hair. You say, “oh, you little brat.” You smooth down the front of your hair. You cling to your collar and bury your face in your neck.
“Don’t you have someone else to bother?” You say. You sneer at you, sharp teeth. You try to turn away, but you catch your wrist before you do. You look at you consideringly.
“I don’t remember being this small.”
You’re not sure what that means.
Your hand locks around your hand. “I suppose all kids start off this small,” you say.
“I guess,” you say back.
“Hey!” Someone says. It’s another you. “What are you doing?”
“Just playing with the kid,” you say back, letting you go. You watch the two of you talk, rubbing your wrist. You are small, compared to you. Surely you’ll grow.
You are you but small. That’s why they like you. That’s why they want to eat you, you remember you saying. That's why they want to see what you are made of. To remember who you were. You want to tear you apart. You try to understand. You break your own skin. You laugh when you see it, and dunk you under the water. “Look at you,” you say.
“Pot, kettle,” you say.
You’re splitting apart. You’re digging into yourself, pulling at your own strings. Your blood is dripping from your own teeth. You are fresh - potential - that's what you say, to you, about you. You are a miracle of life. You are a proof of concept.
You say, “you’re going to kill him.”
You say, “we’ll just make another one.”
You’re still too small. You're too big. You don't know what you're doing.
"What are you doing?" You know what you are doing.
“Relax,” you say. “Just playing with the kid.”
