“Say Cheese!”
The photographer says with a smile as fake as the one you’re about to make.
You say the words, the light flashes, and your false happiness is immortalized.
Framed within the glass structure, the ideal version of you that everyone brags about is often the version most people remember.
Like how flash photography captures you in one particular moment in time, our minds can work the same way.
One moment in time can be so vivid, so enduring that no matter what happens to you, it will linger in your mind longer than most others, oftentimes longer than anything in the moment itself.
You’ll remember what you wore, the smell of the room, the sounds bouncing off the walls like a speaker is playing them right now. Every detail will remain with you until the day someone has to write all the details about you.
None of those memories for me are good.
The moment I found my father not breathing.
The moment I caught my mother doing what gave us a living.
The moment Zeus found out what I was doing.
What could have been one good memory, you took from me, Gemini.
A simple hex you say so flippantly that you must not realize what you’ve done to me.
You helped me escape but you just replaced one prison with another.
“You owe me.”
A phrase that could mean so many things but out of your lips could only be read as a threat.
I couldn’t think about anything else, I couldn’t enjoy the freedom you allowed me, my only escape from that nightmare was sleeping and hoping the dreams could be better.
Are you happy? I’m here, whatever you want from me, I’m here.
Be careful what you wish for because just as those memories are like photography, so is life, you develop from the negatives.
If there’s one positive about being able to focus on one thing, that tunnel vision, that hyperfocus will make sure you get your way at the end.
It’s how I escaped my mother.
It’s how I climbed to the top.
It’s how I became an icon.
It’s how I fell and we became acquainted.
For years, I’ve been thinking about how to deal with you and now after watching you for the last few weeks, I’ve figured it out.
I’ve figured you out.
Magic is all you are, like any shadow you need something much more than yourself to be seen.
No one would know who you are if it wasn’t for it, after all, you don’t even know yourself.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being at the top, it’s what real power looks like.
It’s making something out of yourself not relying on anything else.
Bitch, you’re everything it’s not and now that the hex is gone and I see the real you, I’m ashamed of ever being afraid of you.
All that’s rang in my years is you owe me and now it’s time to give you what you’re owed.
An assault so brutal you won’t ever forget it.
Like a photograph, I don’t need magic to make people remember me.