Surface (ab)normal

Megan Brown

Evening’s dim ritual 
I worry 
worn skin 

prick and pull 
rose nose and faded 
scars

three layers 
deep 
carried, incidentally 
by ebbing 
evening light. 

parallel self

less 
unsettling 
than the feel of my face
plane 
          against the world. 

I want to   rest
beet-cheeked against
my cold sister

brush the silver 
from my children’s
face 
                         inverting

teach them
to love 
their tarnished selves.

The Science

I wrote this poem whilst reflecting on how mirrors work, how their structure creates the image we hold of ourselves. I work remotely and find it unbearable if my video isn’t mirrored in the settings of the videoconferencing software I use on my laptop. This discomfort led me into thinking about mirrors, and the role they have played in how I see myself in a way that is different than the rest of the world. I used the imagery of mirrors' structure in this poem to reflect on my thoughts. Mirrors have a 3-layer structure – the second layer was traditionally a reflective layer of silver (though in modern-made mirrors is usually aluminium), and I used the imagery of silver and tarnishing in the poem. I also drew on the imagery of lateral inversion (the term ‘inverting’ alludes to this) and the angle of incidence (the term ‘incidentally’). Finally, the term ‘plane’ is used in this poem and is found in descriptions of a mirror's flat surface. The title ‘Surface (ab)normal’ is a play on ‘Surface normal’, the concept which is used to determine the path of light rays during reflection – I enjoyed subverting this, to reflect the uneasy tension I felt when considering my appearance in a mirror, alongside my ‘normal’ appearance to the world in daily life.

The Poet

Megan Brown (she/her) is an ex-doctor and current educational researcher who lives in York, in the United Kingdom. She has engaged with poetry within research, where she has created research poems exploring new doctors' experiences of transitioning to clinical practice. She is an avid reader and writer of poetry, but this would be her first published poem. Megan writes about her experiences as a disabled person, as a mother, and as someone who is neurodivergent.

Next poem: The First Light by Lynn Rosa André