Mirrorland

A mirror is glass | is stone | is lake residue | is tempting to taste | is sharp around the edges | it can be broken | it can ruin your life. We wake alone in our beds the next morning with an ache deep and poisonous as mandrake root. Our sheets a little red. Bodies a little cleaved apart—though untouched. The trick of the mirror: all gaze. A mirror is like flesh | it can be stretched | it can be trimmed | it can upset the mannequin | it can render her unrecognizable. A mirror does not need to exert itself to capture motion—but we can’t get away.

Preteen girls, we like the carnival, the neon flashes of Ferris wheel across the river. April and its rainslicked rides. Tilt-a-whirl thrill. Our hearts: many-chambered funhouses of mirrors. Inside, we turned to each other:

Look who’s wearing deodorant. On the count of three.

Show us your tits.

One, two, three.

You slut.

A mirror can be a shield | it can be a weapon | it is where all ghosts go to confess. Against the glass we saw how close we could get to our own lips, marveled at pupils erupting into black confetti. I saw for the first time two glistening stretchmarks—parentheses around my navel, and I knew then: my mother had invented mirrors.

A mirror is impossible to offend | it knows it won’t be forgotten | it tells only truths | yet human confessions only deflect back. You must take them someplace else. The river maybe. If the light is right. If there’s an undertow. In one mirror we held each other’s knuckles then spun in circles, chanted for

Bloody Mary. I did not open my eyes for fear she would scratch them out. The others squealed, and Mary became alive for me. A mirror cannot expose unspoken desire | and yet isn’t desire exactly what it is? A mirror can be held in one hand | a candle in the other while a woman walks backwards up the stairs of a dark house until she sees the image of her future lover—

but we thought ourselves alone. Wished to be alone with the glass. Just outside the tent, a carny had just coaxed a girl our age into the back of his truck. A mirror can be broken | a broken mirror changes nothing | we gather the shards for each other | and claim we love her | and her | and her fractured face.