The split lived in her sternum.
Some nights she caught herself in the window’s reflection—perfectly angled, waiting for an appraisal that hadn’t yet arrived—and felt a surge of rage so clean it could fuel a city. Other nights, the rage collapsed into a smaller, uglier question: What if the training worked? What if I’m most powerful when I’m most object-like?
It sounds like you’re exploring a powerful and provocative tension: the contradiction between being (agentic, self-determining, critical) and being trained to be an object (passive, decorative, existing for the gaze of others). The unfinished word “mi…” could point to several directions—“mind,” “mirror,” “misogyny,” or “misfit.”
And yet.
She was trained to be a mirror—reflecting what others needed to see.
