It’s a topsy turvy world. This small shackle feels so big without you. I feel so empty inside even though loneliness is with me. The mirror, my image in it, feels like the only company I have. At times the mirror imitates me and at others it is like a gateway to another world in which I can see you. You seem happy, with her. I try to scream and call for you but the insulating glass walls of the mirror don’t let it reach you. You seem so near yet so distant.

My eyes are watery now and a sigh escapes my mouth and then suddenly you disappear and the glass window vanishes. I see my reflection again in the mirror which was my gateway to you moments before. It was a sight to behold. What I see now is a limp body so devoid of life that there is no color in the cheeks, no shine in the tresses or no radiance in the skin. What I see now is a old rag, a tattered body and a broken soul. I look into the dull eyes, and it’s so hollow one can see through my soul. In the figments of my imagination, it still resides in a wonderful plush city, full of people running about thier daily chores. But now the same city looks like a shell of itself, empty and dark and smelling of death and destruction. Then I couldn’t hold it. That welled up river of my anguish starts flowing in all directions, as if it aims to drown, as if wants to establish its claim over me, as if it owns me. I shut my eyes close.

But when I open my eyes again, what I see is a warrior, armour ready, to fight another fleeting moment of sadness. She’s ready to continue doing it, moment after moment, day after day, year after year, till the time she is sure it’s defeated and she has defended herself. The mirror certainly knows what to show me. It knows what I want to see. It understands me in this loneliness. Maybe that is why it is my only companion in this solitude.

Last modified: August 19, 2021