The following is a poem by Jess Kagan

St.Louis Finalist from Clayton High School

The Mirror on the Wall

I’m not sure how we became best friends. Me and my mirror on the wall. It just took one glance out of the corner of my eye,
for me to be drawn to him like a moth is drawn to light.

He says that he can make my life better, and make all those thoughts I have about myself go away.

I thought nothing of it,
I told him all of my secrets.

Until the day he became more impatient and clung to me with his claws, like a scared puppy.
He always wanted to know what I was thinking.

I stopped talking to him for a while, he wasn’t the one for me.

I stopped feeding him my personal thoughts,
and only realized he doesn’t need my words to make him grow.

The thoughts of myself being less special than everyone else became stronger as I became older.
I had
No friends

My family didn’t love me
Nobody understood me.
So I uncovered my so called best friend.

Back where it all started. Just me and that mirror on the wall.

He says he’s missed me,
but I remember,
He somehow always knows how to make me believe everything he says. A shadow that always seems to be haunting me,
like a bad dream you can’t wake up from.

He tells me that i’ve put on a few pounds,
then tells me to go get more skinny like those other girls
and put on a mask load of makeup so nobody really knows how you look without it. I ask him, why be someone you’re not?
It replies the same thing it did a few years ago,
Thats what will make people love you.

Ever since I released the beast from its den,
I’ve felt like a puppet, and the shadow is the puppeteer.

He decides what I do, he decides how I move. He doesn’t seem to care if it affects me or not,
He only cares about himself.
I have no control over him even though i’ve tried to cut the strings holding me to him.

No matter how many heartfelt compliments I get from the people around me about how skinny I am,
and how good I look with a new face on that only me and the shadow know isn’t mine. i’m always still the girl crying at the end of the night in front of the mirror, while it watches me and laughs.

I’m tired of him making me leave scars on my body that won’t go away, andi’m sick of being afraid of everything
and not being able to take control
of my own self. He’s not my best friend like he said he was,

He is a monster. That has all the power over the ones that trust him enough to let
him get inside our heads.
We let him eat up our thoughts and bad things of the past and use it against us to make our opinions of ourselves go way
down.

I wake up one morning and he’s standing at the foot of my bed like always, mouth curved in a smirk,
his claws are open ready to scoop up all my thoughts like it’s a big fresh carton of the best ice cream he’s ever seen. I take a deep breath and stand face to face with the beast.

He looks at me with questioning eyes. I am courageous I think to myself. I will not be someone else just because you want me to. Nobody can make you go away except me, you don’t belong inside me, I’m confident.

The shadow in the mirror lingers for a few minutes, I could see tears trickling down the glass,
Then he disappears,
just like that,

without a trace that he was ever there. and the battle is over.