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There is something living inside my mirror.
It doesn't move.
At least I don't see it move if it does. I never know what to do when it watches me, because sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes... it looks like it's staring at something behind me. Sometimes it stares through my soul. Sometimes it's not there. I don't know if I'm not looking hard enough or if it's hiding inside of me those days.
Some days I don't have the guts to get out of bed because I know I'll have to pass it. Some days I wish I could sleep forever so I didn't have to make myself walk past it. I don't think it means me any harm, but it scares me. It sings in the nights, but every time I look its mouth isn't moving. It isn't moving. I don't know why I'm so stuck on it not moving, it's not even in different places every morning. It stays rooted and rotting to the left corner of my mirror, head clocked to once side. It looks dead. I wish it was dead, but I don't think it is.
I swear it isn't because it looks like me. It looks like me. I'm not exaggerating and I never have, not about this. Its hair falls in rings around its face like mine does except, some of its hair is tattered and clinging to its skull. It's eyes are drooping and darker than mine, but it's the same shape. Its eyelashes cross and clump together like mine do. Its cheekbones sit at the same height that mine do and its nose is the same shape. Its throat flexes when mine does. Its throat is slit. That's a difference from me. Its throat is red ringed and dripping blood down its nightgown. Its lips are blue and turning white, and some of its teeth are punched out.
So it looks like me, but it's not. It looks like it's been withering for centuries. It scares me, when I think back to what my grandmother looked like at that age, what her mother looked like at that age, because they too look like me. And I sometimes wonder if it's one of them who haunts my mirror. But I don't think it is, they were too soft.
The thing in my mirror is gaunt and pale and sharp. It keeps watching me, its eyes move now. Even as I sleep I know it watches me. That's the only part of it that moves. Its eyes. And those eyes are always watching me. I've asked if my Mama if she can see it. She can't. She thinks I'm going mad.
Maybe I am and I don't know it. Does anyone know when they're going mad? The thing in my mirror still sings, and it's still terrible. Its voice is a wailing and high-pitched scream. Sometimes it doesn't even sing, sometimes it shrieks. I think that if the thing in my mirror is dead, that is what it sounded like when it died. I've asked my Daddy if he can hear it, but he can't.
I asked my brother, and my sister, and my cousins and my friends and none of them can see it. They can't hear it. I think the thing in my mirror is going to kill me. I think it might have done so already. I think the thing in my mirror is me. Maybe not me now, but me later. Me before. Maybe it is me eternally.
The thing in my mirror still watches me but it's my friend now. It still sings, and still screams. It's still undead. I don't think it was ever dead, but I've accepted that it was never alive. I still think it's going to kill me, but it doesn't bother me anymore. Because I was going to die anyways, right? Who cares how.
I'd be happy to go by my friend in the mirror, because death by its unmoving hands will be familiar and welcomed. Because I've listened to its screams now, I've agreed to its shrieks. I've worn my tears down to dreaded streaks, and my smile as high as our cheeks. We howl to the end of the world together now.
My friend in the mirror killed me. And now we wail together forever, because my friend in the mirror has laced our lungs aside, with pretty red ribbon and string. My neck is ringed red now, and my teeth are half punched in. My hair falls round my face in waterfalls of dust and my lips are white and thin.
I joined the thing in my mirror, and we’ve moved to haunt another.
(Can you hear my wail?)