The mirror never lied; it simply lacked the power to create.
It could only borrow, whatever happened to stand before it.
It returned borrowed light, borrowed smiles, borrowed faces.
Each stranger quietly hoping, an older version was still there.
Every morning we wipe the steam from the bathroom glass,
yet never think to polish the hidden silver behind it.
Imagining that one more careful surface wipe might finally show,
the face we have always longed to meet there.
A hand reaches out to touch the waiting glass.
Another hand reaches back, at exactly the same moment.
Finger meets finger - yet both discover only the dank dark cold.
For reflections can imitate everything except touch.
The mirror borrows nothing but light.
Yet somehow it faithfully returns my own shadow as well.
How can it reflect such an absence?
A shadow is only light withheld.
An outline of absence sketched onto
what can never be held.
Shadows never walk ahead; they follow closely behind.
I looked over my shoulder deep into their outline,
hoping to glimpse tomorrow, wishing the mirror,
would transform into a window
revealing what lay beyond my longing.
But, tomorrow casts no shadow to follow.
Tomorrow lies hidden, in the thinnest skin of silver—
that precious illusionist,
that teaches glass
to forsake transparency,
and to make reflections its reality.