The broken mirror

She died. I heard. I did not know she lived. Where she lived. With whom. How. Nothing.

I felt her death, I cannot explain how. I felt her in death, as though her stiff body was within me. The pain spread to the arms, the belly hardened, the face went numb. The lungs would not expectorate even a sound.

I felt her death because they had said I reminded them of her. From certain angles, maybe. From a certain perspective. From a region of nowhereness where you could not quite pin it down but it was there…perhaps the way I smiled, or the way I looked away in the distance, or chewed the nail on my little finger, or bit my lower lip, or frowned, or walked, or pushed my hair behind my ears everytime strands fell on my cheeks like running mascara.

Maybe, we used the same fragrance, the same shade of lipstick, the same colours for clothes.

Maybe, we occupied spaces without touching our feet on them, or were scattered about by cyclones that hovered near us even in fair weather.

There wasn’t much talk but after that one and only, “There is something similar”, I had begun to feel like there was a mirror somewhere, a mirror I could not look into. She did not know of my existence so she was not burdened with my thoughts. I was. Not quite burdened, but I did carry her and felt like those looking at me were looking for her.

They were not. I know it. She had become a past because she was the past. They only told me because it was a way of sharing. But I carried her. I did not want to; she stayed. I don’t know when I buried her, though. A year ago? Two years ago?

She died. I heard. It did not sound like news. It seemed like a mirror crashed somewhere and the glass pieces reached me when it was too late.

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Image: Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror