The mirror doesn’t reflect, it mocks the vulnerable. It is a focal view of insecurity and doubt, reflected by that frigid glass. As awful and self-destructive as it is to linger in these glassy displays, I find myself coming back to them, meeting them every day as if it were ritual. The reflection this mirror gives me can relinquish all safety, all confidence, all of everything that I have built up while away from this mean glass. That’s what it is, it’s mean in all ways. Mean that it disrespects and torments my spirit. Mean that it is only grains of sand brought together to form glass, enveloped in silver. Mean that it brings everything I doubt about myself together and gives more to loathe. It’s shape is so simplistic in design, clear cut edges, keen. A film of reflective silver, lustrous. It is only a hunk of glass, yet it haunts me and plunges my glimmer of hope into an abyssal prison creating hell and obsession.

How can a precisely cut shard of glass be so horrible? Those fine edges that are sunken into the frame of wood as if it were a painting, and the white bulbs emitting an amber glow above the mirror as if it is something magnificent to behold. I notice that if I touch the glass it is cold, oleaginous, and somehow it is reflecting my finger. It looks as though I have met another person in that mirror and when I go to touch them I feel that frigid surface. This mean glass is a distortion to me, it is mistaken. The mirror has one goal of seeking to kill, and my wounded spirit crumbles at its malignant gaze. I stand there with my eyes on that glass and I see a person inside that the mirror has mimicked. It is not me, that mirror shows only pain. It shows internal suffering by releasing dysphoria.

This cruel game is taking away my truth and creating this distortion of a person of whom I do not recognize. It is as though I am looking through a window and not a mirror. I see someone looking at me, not I looking to myself. My eyes look to their eyes and a conversation without the parting of lips begins. Before I question why they have taken my reflection, I notice that those eyes staring back are mine. The folds above the eyes, the subtle creases underneath formed from years of laughter and precious smiles. I remember happiness and safety when I see those lines, those wrinkles of time. However, if I look away from those eyes and elsewhere there is error. I step away from this silent exchange, I sense my heart has sunk so deep into my chest that my ribs resonate within silence, the internal beating and the vibrations then vocalizing in my head. It is overwhelming, a sensation of a feather tickling behind my eyes irritates them and it provokes a stream of salty tears down a puzzled expression. I don't wish to see that reflection in the mirror again, I like to hope that by morning the mirror will stop it’s deceptive behavior.

At night I dream about that mirror, how the spectacle of the mirror is a stage with its lights glowing above it. Inside it’s depths is the entertainment. Amusing to it, negligent to me. I am a tigress trapped in its circus. I desire to take my fist and crack my knuckles against that abuser. A familiar heat radiating to my hand and it would become red and I wince at the pulsating rhythm in knuckles. The pain dancing across my hand and even if I had defeated it, it follows me everywhere. I used to think a mirror can only be that clean-cut shape, but it seems a mirror has no restrictions or limitations to where it travels. On rainy days, I walk down the concrete sidewalks that are turned a stormy grey from the dampness of bulbous water droplets, smacking against the tight ground. I rather enjoy the rain, until I look down and see a puddle. Ripples form all around it from the heavy rain, but due to my need to peer inside the translucent puddle, I realize it is a mirror. The shapeless glob that continuously waves and splatters with the rain and wind, it is reflecting. It’s not reflecting me but reflecting that distortion it so often threatens me with. I recoil and stomp into that water mirror, my shoe becoming heavy and swampy. Is this what victory is like? I have defeated a mirror, but it does not so easily dissipate. I look up and I see a window, the dark sky making it difficult to see inside and what I see is the same reflection. I can never escape it.

A cry for help will never stop this hall of mirrors, it surrounds me and consumes me until nothing but a vessel is left. Empty and lethargic. The mirror takes and takes and takes without mercy. It cannot spare anything for me, not even a glance of ease. I walk with sunken eyes, bitterness towards the world and I allow myself to be lost in the thoughts of the mirror. I cannot focus on anything but how that mirror has made me feel. Then comes the dawn I didn’t see coming, I notice that if I focus in on the eyes of lovely friends, I can see that they are looking into my eyes, those disfigurements that the mirror shows me are points of focus only I see and obsess over. My friends embrace me in their eyes. An organic mirror that only sees what dwells beneath the skin. Those rounded lively beings, two gentle eyes with lashes that lure me into them are tender and kind. It seems that a mirror can be found in everything, but only in the living mirror reflects and I see what I truly am. A beautiful spirit held in the eyes of others. That corpse of still glass is withering away now that I do not obsess in its display. A mirror doesn’t reflect, it does much more. If I look to the right one.