The concrete seemed to engulf the cold, stiff edges of my lines and cuts, in and out, and of my heart, round and leaden. There’s a small bone in my elbow that weaves between the tendons like a vine, creating a rippled effect through my skin. Is neither soft nor wet nor dry; a thick piece of dead eggshell parchment. My eyelashes are thinly visible, sprouting from a meager rim. My fingers, too long; my nose, unremarkable. I am a skeleton model whose shallow structure can be popped apart and pieced back together. But really, it is my unusually porous bones, I suppose, that would best describe my fate.

The smell is stiff. There is no taste.

In the room, there are three grey walls and a one-way window. The air is thick with large particles that consolidate in between the folds of low-lit darkness. My hair is still long, falling like the raven’s nest in a tangled heap below my shoulders. I keep a candle on my workbench in the corner. I bought it from a man who told me that my eyes were black and empty.

But I have a chair that lurches around me as I fall back into his plush leather lining. His carved wooden arms reach up towards my wrists to hold me down. I do not have a single thought. I exist in gradients of black and white.

I am a scientist.

They’ve hired me after years of failed attempts. They could not separate themselves from the crime. Pieces, shards of their memories and passions and opinions, compassion, would splinter off into the subject. Days would go by and they would only grow to discover more and more of themselves in the prisoner. And so the war continued for years, and they kept the suspected enemies they’d gathered from around the globe stuck in this underground jail. They discovered me, the lost shell, digging out of a cave, and assumed my apathetic disposition as a bodily version of a blank slate would perfectly fulfill the requirements needed. You see, I did not seem to have any subjective qualities or unique opinions in which I could use the details of our captured criminals to reflect personally. Therefore, I could judge people.

My study is in facial expressions.

I see the face as an algorithmic creature I can peel off and spread out, mark up and take notes on. I know you by your face, because it is impossible for me to make an impression on the dips in your fuzzy cheeks and the wrinkle between your eyebrows or the triangular spoon above your lip. I communicate in sound waves that permeate through walls, running away from me until time’s sunken end. I was never created in a body. A body was created without me. I am an artist’s forgotten sculpture and a dreamer’s jerk back to reality.

An abandoned vessel to an identity.

I’m deep within the concave leather, running my fingers over the grooves in the oak. The sterling bars running on the ceiling’s outline create a halo of metallic sheen above me. When I was young I thought an angel found me in the black, in the cave; I couldn’t see anything, I heard sharp shots, bang bang, and the cave shook, raining dust, I became dark inside but no one thought to look in the cave and see my sooty tears running down my protruding cheekbones; I was lost, you see, I was lost and I lost I lost anything I used to have and now, you see, I am no one.

I think it was my soul I saw in that cave. I think that’s when I left me.

[war does that to people]

The war has been trudging like an old man for decades. People come together as families within their countries, forming a communal identity. The soldier they’ve never met becomes their son. I wonder if a world at war is now a world in harmony.

A world at war is now a world in harmony. I am staring into a one-way window.

My first prisoner was an elderly woman, small, shriveled from the grey cell and lonesome cold. Prisoners of war never seem quite sad, or scared, or angry. It is a quiet hope hidden in their sinking hearts, a quiver of disbelief, gripping threads that skitter through the underground jail, a maze, out into the world to no where. She’s wearing a thick scarf of rich indigo around her frayed white hair. Her wrists are small, her hands belong to wealthy elegance. She is wearing a turquoise ring. Palm down, second finger from the left, left hand. Must have smuggled it past the guards. A Duchess nose. Her face is a worn cream with a tinge of powder blue, her skin like the drawn down colors of an oil painting left in the rain. Except for her eyes, young, curious, non-present cobalt jewels. Remnants of creases left by years of smiles and laughs, sandpapered over by wrinkles. She looks down. Interweaves her fingers. Mouth twitches. Eyes blink. Sniffs. One tear welled in a crease. Looks up. Fiddles with the ring. Closes eyes. Tear falls. Pained smile.

I push out my chair and walk over to my desk. I’ve hung a small painting above the candle, Van Gogh’s original Irises. I stole it from a cabin built into a hillside in Avignon. I felt it glowing in the family’s abandoned sitting room, followed the heat of the blue flame until I unlatched the trunk and found it there, wrapped in an old cloth. They must have just left because I could still smell the fresh aroma of blueberry tart permeating the stagnant air. I smell it now. I was such a clever child, unaffected by the affluence and prestige I worked to keep hidden. People could only tell by my hands, which were inescapably demure. A soft smile spreads across my face. My hands are blue. I hadn’t noticed I was cold.

I light the candle on my workbench. The flame seems to project its cyan tinge; the walls weep an unmistakable sadness that slips feebly off the slick concrete.

I was born in December and I lived in a land of eternal winter. My hair was always layered with whisps of white feathers that fell from the blank sky and clung to my lashes. I couldn’t find my family in the castle, so I grew up mostly alone. The only comfort I discovered was in my family’s art, exposing worlds of spring and color and shades of life and flushed breath I had never encountered. I would wander through the forest, picking the frozen blueberries, plopping them into the scarf I wore diagonally across my shoulder. But with my eyes closed, I was on Rue de Belleville clutching a steaming cup of au lait. My feet crunched the brittle leaves bellow the ice. My words crystallized in the air and my tears froze midway down. That’s where I met the boy.

[We ran away together, into the forest, with only one painting. We found a home in the hillside and started a family.]

I feel a soft pain, my ribs are creeping, gently enclosing on my lungs as if they have finally found their last light of happiness and can now exhale their final stale breath. One hand clutches my chair, the other holds my bones. What have I done? What have I done? There is blue in lifeless blood, and I am hopeful, I am sure the blueberries are still frozen and the painting still vivid and I am not the enemy, I am lost in the castle of my cold, sad childhood, I must be dead or dying on a packed street in Paris because I have tasted my last breath and I feel closure for my husband and my life, have mercy, there is blue in lifeless blood and I am here.

I had no need to interview her. It was clear from her face that she knew nothing, was not keeping enemy secrets. I pressed the button and some men in sharp uniforms rushed in and dragged her out.

The next prisoner should be coming in soon.

I see his face through the window, and the pain dissolves into a burning ember in the pit of my stomach.

The second prisoner’s eyebrows are so thick and furrowed I can hardly see his eyes. I decide they are an almond shape, and notice the whites are completely blood-shot, like round fireworks soaring into the sky and bursting in brilliant heat and rage. His cheeks are flushed, maybe irritated by a rash. He has decadent eyelashes that wave like fans and a long, curled mustache that trembles with his lip. His beige skin is stretched thinly across his structure. His nose arches out, away from the dip below his cheekbones. Pulled tightly over his forehead, he wears a maroon fez with a gold tassel that sways back and forth as he shakes. He mumbles through his red stained lips, spitting glimpses of glaring white teeth and a crimson tongue. I know he can’t see me. He grins, chuckling softly, bubbling over. His mouth then rests, corners pulled down from time and cruelty. Dead, red eyes.

I jump out of my chair, and throw it against the wall. I consume the space in a seething fire of anger, rocketing the papers from my desk, pulling the painting off the wall, throwing the flamed candle into the storm.

What is war? I cannot tear away from my mother’s wails that pierced through the thin walls as I rushed to her hiding under the blanket. Ripped away from my family at four AM, mother thrown in the back of the van, father’s red calloused hands raised, head bowed, never even saw my sister disappear, never even saw my brother pulled from his bed. I was supposed to be the oldest, I was supposed to make everything ok, but it wasn’t ok, no, because the war was our life and I couldn’t stop the inevitability of time ticking; it was our time, our time, but they were so young, my sister was so young. I used to read her this book about Paris, about the bustling streets of Rue de Belleville, of the rich magenta silks and manicured ruby nails and rose perfume, because she liked my voice, said it sounded like a song, said she could hear the curled French accents under my Arabic tongue and I thought how ironic she loves me for what I’m not, and I would watch her scan my face, over my prominent nose, across my large eyes, through my dark skin, and wonder if she saw something different than what I saw. I wonder, the last time she looked at me, while I cradled her in my arms, if she knew who I was.

The flames in the small concrete room were growing into a small animal, moving rhythmically like a snake. Everything was lit with orange, rusty, scarlet, brick hues, maybe because of the fire, maybe because of the anger-tinged lens over my eyes, but I rushed to the corner where I left the rug, unraveled the roll, and hurled it onto the fire. It fell with a thud, and the fire was gone, replaced by a puff of dust escaped from the old and forgotten carpet. I had found it once when I returned back home, years after my family was taken, the first (and only) time I escaped. I went back home. It was as if time had stopped; the glass pitcher was still in pieces on the floor, the aged bottles of wine still in the cupboard, the beds still made with the crimson sheets and pillows, my mother’s scarf still hung on the lamp. Everything was covered with a thin layer of sand. I left with the rug. Figured I could sell it for a few Dirham.

They found me, again, shortly after, which is why I now find myself in this concrete box. 

The temperature has risen substantially. Thank God it is a one-way mirror. I wipe the sweat above my lip and turn to the window. The man is still looking at me, almost as if he can see me.

I push the button and he’s gone.

Of course, he is also innocent. Anyone with that amount of matured and thickened resentment, so enveloping, so all encompassing, could not also make room for guilt.

I can’t decide whether I found or lost myself in the cave, in the darkness, where I was born. Because my life, in my memory, starts in the cave. I wonder if I know myself at all, if my life was reversed and I ended where I should have began, and began where I should have ended. I lost myself where I found my life.

I’d fallen asleep on the slightly burnt rug, still warm from putting out the fire. My eyes opened, stinging from all the debris caked on my face. My blurry vision slowly focused. My shoulder popped, my knee squeaked, my back crackled, as I pieced myself back together into the witch born in ashes. There was a rectangular package left next to my desk, wrapped with brown paper.

But it was time for the third prisoner.

It is a child this time. A small boy, maybe eleven or twelve. His skin. His eyes. His mouth. All there. It doesn’t matter much to me; I don’t understand the differences. What are eyes for me to read, or a mouth for me to judge, a smile for me to influence? He looks human. He looks like a person.

He is smiling, not a tortured smile; understanding and reassuring. His entire face radiates joy, the wrinkles around his eyes, his button nose, his supple cheeks; I feel the beams warming my face like the sun, sinking beneath my skin, into my bones, my porous bones. If your brain could morph and mold in your head, your synapses reconnecting, this is what it would feel like. Every time I interrogate a prisoner, my head weighs a little less or a little more, my eyes seem to fog over or focus with greater clarity, my conscious thoughts speak in a different voice. Am I the experiment? He stares directly into my eyes.

He can see me.

His wrists are tied to the chair, but he raises one meager finger.

I don’t understand what I see or the meaning of our system; I accept my sight without any influence except my own. My world is only mine. It has only been a brief moment, but I’ve journeyed this world, alone, born into an innocence so pure my eyes couldn’t be black or empty, they must be clear and open.

I get out of the leather chair for the last time and follow the boy’s pointed finger, crawling to the package, my energy gone, and methodically tear the paper. It is lined with gold so delicately carved it looks like the lace my mother wears around her neck. Little dots of diamond line the rectangle. The surface shimmers. It is a reflective mirror. 

The smell is stiff. There is no taste.

I’ve made a habit of keeping away from mirrors. Every time I notice my reflection, I only see an empty, blank surface. I am an empty vessel, absorbing those around me.

I peer into the reflective mirror. At first I just see only a face covered with black soot. But as I peal away the grim, I begin to sink. I begin to melt. Because as I feverously tear at my skin, I find

I have the face of the young boy.

I have become the young boy.

I become the person I see.

I become the person I see. No more. No less. I am your mirror. A perfect reflection of the face, an embodiment of the person. If only my hand were poised to paint, I could relay the beauty of a flower with exactness; an artist’s dream in a subjective world. If I should be the one to decide, there would be no war, for I could see the truth in all, and I would be the eyes for society. But instead, they keep me locked in a grey cell, torturing me with the painful truth that the world is not black and white, and the enemy is not always bad, and the prisoners have nothing to hide. They’re civilians. I know because I’ve been them, worn their face and let their emotions run through me. But, alas, I am not ruler of the world because I see no more, no less, and the world is run on dreams and maybes, ideologies and spontaneities, and I, I destroy it all.