The Wound

You walk through the world with a mirror raised. Every face becomes surface for your reflection – unfinished story cast onto theirs. In every encounter, you search for yourself. The person in front of you does not change, only your angle does. Their eyes hold weather you did not make. The lines around their mouth were carved by laughter you never heard, grief you cannot know. They have been standing there the whole time – waiting for you to see them. One day the glass catches something it cannot contain. A face too distinct to be a surface for you. Your grip tightens and the edge bites your palm. You have carried this so long you cannot remember your arms without it. To let it fall is to lose the only face you recognise. The mirror slips. Barely a sound. You stand amongst the shards, hands empty. For the first time, you see a face that was never yours.

The Path

The old habit does not die with the mirror. The shards still catch light at your feet. Your hand keeps reaching – the old reflex grasping for a weight that is gone. Your fingers close on air. For a while, you kneel among the shards and try to rebuild. You press them together and cut yourself on edges that won't align. The reflection returns in pieces – an eye here, half a mouth there, nothing whole. You cannot reassemble what the mirror held. So you stop. In the stillness, you begin to see them. Not as reflection but as themselves. Their eyes hold weather you did not make. Their grief belongs to them. Their joy does not require your witness. The reaching does not stop. It only softens. Each time, your hands open sooner. The stillness becomes rest. One day you meet someone and the reflex fires – your fingers find nothing, and you let them. Their eyes meet yours. They have been waiting.

The Shadow

Clear seeing has a cost. Some pay it once, never again. The Cataloguer held someone once – full weight and strangeness. When he surfaced, gasping, they'd already turned away. He had poured himself into presence, and presence had purchased nothing. He gave a year. They gave a season. Faces exhaust him now. Each one a door that might close. All that depth. All that difference. All that demand to be witnessed by someone who might leave anyway. So he begins to sort: this one, useful; that one, obstacle; the other, entertainment. He assigns them roles in his own theatre until they are small enough not to cost him anything. He wanted witnesses who wouldn't leave. He made everyone too small to stay. Another finds the mirror empty – and fills it with someone else. The Idol-Maker looked in the glass once and found no one looking back – only a shape waiting to be told what it was. She cannot bear the emptiness, so she finds someone to worship instead. She studies them, then gilds them with everything she refuses to find in herself. The life she might have lived withers in the glare of the god she made. When the gold cracks, she calls it betrayal – never seeing the brush still wet in her hand.

The Cut