Mortal Coil

I've been thinking about self recognition. Like, literal looking in the mirror self recognition. It is so weird to me sometimes. I'll be going about my daily activities and this...consciousness is in control of my actions. I'm saying things and doing things and feeling small or tall or pretty or lumpy. My ideas about who I am are constantly being reshaped. And then I look at myself in a mirror, stare right at--right into my own eyballs, and there it is. My body. The case I am contained in. Except not. It's the "case" that I am. It's my eyes that are seeing attached to my mind that has its certain perspectives about how this world works. It's my nerves that make me nervous, or happy, or in love. I read a quote recently. "Love is chemicals," is said. Synapses firing in a morse code meaning "this means more to you."  I am the body I am in. Except for those parts that feel so outside of me. But love feels so outside of me sometimes. It feels like something poured in, added later, like vanilla into bland pancakes.

Can you imagine the day you realize that the bald-headed, chubby, short-limbed thing in the mirror is you?  One day your mother has got you in her arms and your eyes go wide and you think, That thing there, that thing is making the face I feel myself making. I am watching thoughts rush through the eyes of that small stranger and they are identical to mine. We are lifting our arms together. We are rubbing our soft heads together, we are, we are, we are...and in a sudden flash of insight, I am. One day that happened to you. Do you think you were disappointed? Until that moment you were anything. Sensations. You were the negative space you felt against your skin. At most, you were arms and toes receding out of your peripheral vision. We all became less and less until the maps of our bodies were fully charted.
And now, the only mystery is that ethereal substance that seems to fit, but not quite fit into our chests. This living thing that is breathing on it's own, twisting and curling it's fingers. As formless as our own faces be for we learned they were ours. Making us forget that we are only flesh. Requiring us to believe that we're missing some crucial piece of human anatomy. Casting doubt on our three-dimensional sensibilities. Sending us off and large into the blue beyond and then-- I catch my eyes in the mirror again. And I am only, only, always only a body.