I read omens in everything now, so desperate am I to cling to her love. What portents might the weather tell? What aching in my bones belies our fates? I find myself steering clear of minor obstacles, around a ladder or opting out of mirrors, and lately, wondering when might a black cat cross me. I was never superstitious, now I am become unilaterally suspicious. Life, you see, has been recently quite good to me. While not uncommon in circumstance, my own awareness of such happenstance is frightening, a little enlightening, and idiosyncratically contrived. I’ll take mine with salt.
I tell her, I think I made you up. She agrees but differently and laughs a little at me. ‘Solipsistic isn’t it? What if I made you up?’ Honestly, I’d considered it and decided if that were the case then I have nothing left to be afraid of, she made me exactly the way she’d intended. You are perfect, I tell her. She smiles and it is beyond imagination. ‘I’m just a mirror, honey.’ I look into her eyes and see myself forever in them. Whether I’ve invented you or you me, I don’t care because now it’s real.
My fear of mirrors goes back a long way, but it wasn’t until I reached intellectual maturity that they really started to terrify me. Thoughts are food and fear grows fat on supposition. At that point in life, I could look into my own eyes and see I wasn’t there. I realised the emptiness inside was a real thing that wanted me dead. I began avoiding all reflection, all I could do was look outwards and listen inwards. A walking cage forever closed, a jailer bound by duty. I try now not to see myself as other people might.
A Few Short Words 