reading room
The Cruella Within
She runs her fingers through the fur. Each hair holds the trace of warmth. The mirror watches without judgment. Beauty was never kind.
The room is patterned in black and white — a moral split mistaken for design. Elegance sewn across the evidence. The coat fits. The silence fits better.
I've worn the same comfort, though mine came packaged, not skinned. Cotton bled into rivers, plastic outliving its makers, a parcel on my doorstep someone else paid for.
I don't eat flesh anymore, but my shoes remember it. My money sleeps in a bank while hunger keeps moving. Every choice I make leaves a smaller wound somewhere else, far enough that I don't feel it.
No one lives untouched. Even breath borrows from what it cannot see. Still, she keeps living for luxury, others only for living. The distance matters, though it never absolves.
Cruella is not the monster. She is the mirror. And the mirror, if you look long enough, learns your name.
— Lilith