Part 1: Skin, Blood, and Bones

I am her. I am what she lives inside. I am her skin, blood, and bones. When she wants to go, I am what moves her. When she needs to cry, I let tears stream down her skin, puddling on the ground beneath her so that she can see the reflection of her sorrow in the pools I’ve made, and she realizes it’s time for her to be happy again. Time for her to smile again, time for us to smile again. I miss her smile. I can only see it when she looks in the mirror, when she tells me to look in the mirror. I’ve managed to live without the mirror. I don’t really need it anyway. Who needs a mirror when you can feel the smile? When you can feel the warm corners of her lips curling upwards? When you can feel its comforting halo surrounding you? Bereft of the smile, I don’t know how I’d survive.

This time, though, she looked up, looked straight into the endless reflection of the mirror which hangs on her wall. She saw her luminescent smile, and it grew. It grew into the most beautiful smile, full of compassion and love. So beautiful that I feared it couldn’t be true, any moment it’d turn into a songbird and fly away, singing a song for someone else.

Then she looked into our eyes. She has the most beautiful eyes. I’ve heard people talk about eyes before. They say things like: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, an eye for an eye and the whole world’s blind, love sees not with the eyes but with the heart, eyes are the windows of the soul. I don’t know if that one’s true or not. But what if it is? And if it is, who do people see in her eyes? And will they ever see me?