If you want to comment on this one go ahead. I'd welcome psycho-analysis 'cause I'm at a loss.
She wakes up and goes to the mirror, half asleep reaching for the toothbrush with the habit of years. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she rummages in the wooden box on the side of the sink, pulling out a hair elastic. Her sleep tossed mane of hair is efficiently and ruthlessly pulled back from her face, allowing her to brush unobstructed. Applying the toothbrush to her mouth with the same single-minded ferociousness earlier seen with her hair, she seems to almost avoid glancing into the looking glass too long…the anti-Alice.
Rinsing, and then ripping out the elastic, dark hair comes tumbling, falling to rest below her shoulders. Sexily tousled, if she was someone else she supposes. She wonders what others see, a critical, almost scientific eye is turned to the mirror.
Dark hair, listed as black on her license, spills over into her face. Layered, the sun hits her head with an angle betraying her true color – not dyed; the locks are actually a deep brown with natural red and gold highlights, a secret color not seen by most. Wild from a night tossing and turning, for her inner turmoil manifests in nighttime activity – REM doing what she can’t (won’t?) do in life, the thick, silky tresses swirl around her eyes, relishing the freedom from the restrictive elastic, a rare opportunity to be wild and free.
Turning her attention straight on, she is met by dark brown eyes. Nothing overly special, just the usual chocolate color found on so many. Eyelashes, much like her hair, long, dark and thick outline the colored lenses. A romantic would say you could lose yourself in those pools of cocoa, but they are what they are not extraordinary nothing to be surprised at. Save, perhaps, in quiet moments when a careful observer can see the walls let down and the depth that lies beneath. Reflective and quiet, it’s easy to see how a smile can be seen in those orbs without ever glancing at the lips, or how deep sadness can permeate. Eyes are, after all, the window into the soul...the effect diminished by the bags that seem to have taken up permanent residence underneath. Sleep deprivation, hard work, poor eating habits…who knows. But they are there, as her mother so fondly points out at every opportunity.
Her skin, a creamy mocha color, mostly even toned, thank heavens for small favors. Full eyebrows, maybe she should shape those but it seems petty to her. A brush across her upper lip reminds her to pick up wax on her way home tonight. A nose that fits, the most anyone can ask for perhaps. Normal lips. A face not bad…perhaps slightly exotic to the average “white devil.” A little rounder than she would wish. Teeth, exposed to 18 months of orthodontia and then left without the retainers in the intervening eight years give an effect of straight but not so perfect as to be annoying. She’s been told she has a beautiful smile, which appears now in a small form as she remembers fondly the first person to tell her so at age 10. It has stayed with her. A hand comes up runs through her hair again, another feature often complimented though she takes that with more salt.
Nothing to be called sexy, not a face that is hit on often, or at all. But not one that is turned away from. Ordinary. Simple. She could enhance with make-up, but never really has put in the effort save a light coat of lipstick from time to time.
A soft sigh escapes her lips, the only indication that her walls were ever down. Imperceptibly, there is a shift. Her hands come up and pull her hair up in a tighter fashion less carelessly then before, a force of habit years old. She quietly pads into the bathroom and starts the shower, the mirror and it’s momentary weakness forgotten, the mask firmly back in place, she readies herself to face the world, the wild abandon inside silenced until sleep comes again at night. She steps into the shower, ready to wash sleep and the night off the rest of her body.
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