What if there were no mirrors?
What if you couldn’t exhaustively study your own reflection before you left the house?
What if you couldn’t catch a glimpse of yourself in a parked
car’s window as you rushed past?
Where would we seek out our own reflections?
We’d have to search for them in other people.
You’d have to study the way your best friend’s face explodes into a smile when you meet eyes across a room.
The way their face crinkles, how their lips turn up into a smirk, how their eyes come alive when they see you.
The magic in moments like that would be the only reflection that mattered, the only echoes of ourselves we could find.
When people softly told you that you were unique and wonderful you’d have no choice but to believe them.
Because that’s the thing. Even though mirrors do exist- they lie to us.
They don’t show the way you look all calm and serene when you’re focused on reading something.
They don’t show the lust in your eyes as you stare out at the world.
They don’t show the way you light up when you tell a funny story, or when you see a dog on the street.
How odd and disorientating it is- to accept that you’ll never truly know what you look like.
At least not in the sense that really matters.