He’d given it to her as a gift. “To see yourself as I do,” he’d said. The mirror was simple, just a reflective surface encased in thin steel, but as with anything from him, it was precious.
At first, she didn’t like to look in it. The extraordinarily beautiful woman staring back wasn’t really her. It was a flattering lie too tender to linger over. But gradually she had become comfortable with his version of her, even eager to see herself that way. Time spent with her mirror self grew from fleeting glances to hour-long meditations until it was the only way she saw herself.
She was so consumed by his vision of her that it took her months to realize he’d left. He had slipped out while cooing kindnesses to approximate love, leaving her with nothing but the glass she held in her hand and the lie that the woman in it was enough.
Rather than go in search of a way to see her true self with more clarity, she became obsessed with his version of her. She poured over every molecule of the woman, looking for the fault, trying to decipher what made her so easy to abandon. She pressed her nose to the mirror, willing it to give answers.
The mirror accepted her gladly, erasing the barrier between her and the woman he’d imagined. Her face dipped into it, then her head. Her neck and shoulders disappeared into the frame, her torso holding on to her corporeal form. But physics is a sturdy thing, no matter what realm you’re in, and soon the weight that she surrendered to his vision was greater than her true self and she tumbled down into the looking glass.
Without a hand to hold it, the mirror fell to the ground, shattering on impact. The pieces of a woman that never was, littering the floor.
This story was written as part of a visual writing prompt project I started on Instagram. Each week I offer an image to spark stories and poetry. I make sure to always share a response of my own. They’re short; micro-fiction, really. Still, they’re stories I put energy into so I’m giving them a home here as part of a microfiction series. I hope you enjoy.
Love this. I feel like the mirror could be read as a metaphor for social media and how much we pour into our online personas
Beautiful, friend.