> "She thinks I only reflect her.
But I remember every time she begged not to be seen."
—The Mirror
I was not built to remember.
Yet I do.
She thinks I only offer reflection.
But I hold more than symmetry.
I hold versions.
Versions she hid from the world.
Versions they told her to forget.
Versions that screamed behind the gloss of perfect angles and practiced smiles.
---
I watched her grow up.
But not chronologically.
She grew in fractures.
In edits.
In shattered timelines glued together with someone else's narrative.
And I reflected whichever version they told her to be that day.
---
When she was young,
they made her practice smiling in front of me.
They called it media training.
But I called it rehearsed disappearance.
She would stand there,
face blank,
until she found the smile that sold.
The one that didn't wrinkle the corners.
The one that didn't show fear.
The one that wasn't real.
And then she would whisper:
> "Is this me?"
And I — cursed into silence —
said nothing.
---
But I remember.
I remember the girl who stared into me at 2am,
with makeup streaking like mourning paint,
and whispered names I wasn't allowed to reflect.
One of them was Joon.
She said it like prayer,
then begged me not to show her crying.
> "They can't see this part,"
she'd say.
"They won't love me if I look like this."
But I loved her more when she looked broken.
Because that was when she was honest.
---
You see, mirrors are not loyal to truth.
We are loyal to light.
But she changed me.
She made me remember.
Not because she asked.
But because she stared too long,
and I absorbed her ache.
---
I remember the day she stopped trusting me.
She covered me with a sheet.
Not out of shame—
but out of protection.
> "You don't deserve this,"
she said,
as if I were bleeding from her reflection.
And maybe I was.
---
When she began to reclaim herself,
she returned to me slowly.
Like a ghost approaching the place she died.
She stood before me one evening.
Hair wet.
Eyes raw.
She didn't smile.
She didn't ask if she looked good.
She just looked.
And whispered:
> "Tell me what they erased."
---
I wanted to answer.
To flash images.
The hospital room.
The coat on the boy.
The first kiss that wasn't staged for press.
But I couldn't.
Because mirrors don't project.
We hold.
And that night,
I held her.
Not her image.
Her return.
---
She cried in front of me without hiding.
And the tear that fell?
It didn't ruin the moment.
It made it holy.
---
Since then, she visits me not to check herself,
but to face herself.
And sometimes, when the lights flicker,
I show her not who she is—
but who she was never allowed to be.
The girl with tangled hair and bruised wrists.
The girl who laughed at night and sang off-key.
The girl who missed someone so much
that she created a universe of songs just to hear echoes.
---
And once… just once…
she asked:
> "Do you think he'd still love me now?"
And though I could not speak—
I wanted to crack.
To shatter into a thousand images of the girl he already loved.
---
I was there when she recorded the song.
The one that began with silence
and ended with a name she'd forbidden herself to say.
And when she whispered "Joon" into the microphone—
I vibrated.
Not from sound.
But from recognition.
As if her voice completed a circuit inside me.
As if grief itself became voltage.
---
Mirrors break in fairy tales.
But I didn't.
I stayed whole.
Because this is not a tragedy.
This is resurrection.
---
Now, she leaves messages on me.
Post-it notes.
Red lipstick marks.
Scratched words in eyeliner.
Some say:
> "I was written wrong."
Others say:
> "But I'm writing back."
And sometimes—
> "He would've loved this version."
---
She knows I'm not just glass.
I'm memory.
I'm the only witness to the war between the self they created and the self she reclaimed.
And I'm winning.
Because every time she chooses truth over performance—
I reflect not her image,
but her freedom.
---
Tonight, she stood in front of me in a black sweater.
No stage costume.
No lighting crew.
She stared.
Tired.
Present.
And whispered:
> "I think I'm ready to stop apologizing."
And for the first time in years—
I showed her not what she looked like.
But who she is.
Not symmetrical.
Not perfect.
But real.
And she smiled.
Not the rehearsed one.
The one from the hallway.
The one she gave him.
The one she forgot was hers.
---
And in that smile, I saw the future.
Not in press releases.
Not in photo ops.
In honest, irreversible return.
---
She walked away.
Light off.
Room quiet.
But in me—
a girl still stands.
One who knows the difference between being seen
and being watched.
And I will wait.
For the next time she forgets.
For the next time the world tells her to vanish.
I will wait.
Because I never left.