&ldquo;You have your father&rsquo;s eyes.&rdquo;&nbsp;
 I lie awake in bed with that phrase repeating in my head, roaming the labyrinthine streets of my mind like a lost beggar with no house to return to. It is not welcome anywhere; no door would open even if it knocked all night. Every nook and cranny of me rejects whatever repulsiveness it harbors&mdash;it is nothing but a plague that could make me crumble. And the most frustrating part is, although the thought is no stranger to the cold shoulder, it persists. It makes a home in the deepest part of my brain, clasping onto whatever memory it can latch onto without permission. The unwanted remark holds on for dear life as I desperately try to expel it before it cements itself as the truth.
 Like all other nights, I fail. It settles until the morning sun rises.&nbsp;
 And as I look at myself in the mirror, sleepless, I see nothing but his eyes staring back at me.
 Dim. Hollow. Unforgiving.&nbsp;
 The truth. (I crumble.)
 The eyes that I grew up to resent were looking right through me once more. I feel bile rise in my throat as I struggle to breathe, the weight of his stare bearing down on my chest like an elephant sleeping soundly. I cough and frightfully try to blink away the hallucination, but it doesn&rsquo;t help at all. It seems like the more I blink, the more his image forms.&nbsp;
 &ldquo;You also have your father&rsquo;s smile.&rdquo;&nbsp;
 The so-called compliment rings in my ear like a broken record as I scrutinize the person in the mirror. A lingering question instantly dominates it because, my god, did he ever smile at all? I can&rsquo;t seem to remember a time when his mouth wasn&rsquo;t in a frown. He was in a constant state of disapproval; the disappointment in his eyes matched the scowl plastered on his face .Funny enough, I can almost hear the clicking of his tongue whenever his gaze fell upon me.
 &ldquo;Sometimes, you sound like him as well.&rdquo;
 Do I really? Out of everything they said, that&rsquo;s the one I believed the least. Words that came out of his mouth always seemed to be slurred. It must&lsquo;ve been the alcohol. Or maybe the complete disinterest of talking to me. I don&rsquo;t know which one was worse, but I silently thank the heavens that at least one thing that related me to him was blatantly false. I didn&rsquo;t need to have my mind to do somersaults just to find an explanation as to why I don&rsquo;t sound like him.
 It&rsquo;s just that I don&rsquo;t. And I genuinely wish that it was the same for the other two cases, but I know that it isn&rsquo;t.
 Reality tends to hit hard. Today, it hit me like a truck going unbelievably fast that it actually shattered my mirror into pieces.&nbsp;
 I look down at the red pooling between my knuckles and laugh bitterly, thinking, &ldquo;I have his hands now, too.&rdquo;
&nbsp;