Mild
The Mirror Knows
519 words · 3 min read
The mirror has been watching me since I moved in.
I know that's not how mirrors work. I know it's just glass and silver and the physics of light. But I've caught myself adjusting my posture when I pass it, standing straighter, pulling a shoulder back — performing something for no one. The mirror doesn't care. That's what makes it safe to perform for.
It's twelve-fifteen on a Tuesday. The city is loud below the window, a truck idling somewhere on the block, someone's music from the building across the gap. The sun is coming through the glass at an angle that makes the room feel like the inside of something hot and still. I'm still in the dress I slept in — thin white cotton, straps, hem at mid-thigh — because it's too hot to be in anything more, and because I haven't decided to be anywhere yet.
The wand is on the dresser. I put it there this morning without deciding anything.
I stand in front of the mirror and look at myself the way I'm not supposed to. Not checking. Not correcting. Just looking. The dress is almost nothing in this light — I can see the shadow of my legs through it, the slight dark suggestion of what's between them. My hair is undone. My arms are bare. I look like someone who has been inside all morning, which I have, and like someone who is about to do something, which I am.
I turn and bend forward over the edge of the dresser.
The wood is cool against my forearms. Warmer than the air, cooler than my skin, and the contrast moves through me before I've done anything else. The dress falls forward with me, the hem lifting at the back — I can see it in the mirror, the hem rising, the backs of my thighs appearing. I watch myself watching myself and feel the heat in my face, which is not embarrassment. It is the specific feeling of being seen by someone who will not look away.
I reach back and pick up the wand.
The sound starts before I've placed it — that low continuous hum, the kind that the city noise almost swallows but not quite. My left hand presses flat against the dresser surface. My right hand holds the wand at my thigh, not yet between, just against the outer edge of the fabric. The cotton is so thin I can feel the vibration already, diffused and spreading, and I watch the woman in the mirror hold herself very still.
The exhale that comes out of her is longer than I meant to give it.
I keep my eyes open. That's the rule I made. The whole point of the mirror is to stay present in it — to watch what happens to my face, to my hips, to the hem of this dress — and not to disappear into the dark behind my own eyelids where no one can see.
My knees part, just slightly. The dress shifts with them.
The mirror holds everything exactly as it is.