liminal spaces

You approach the mirror, sure that when you touch it, your hand will ripple through it like through water and touch someone else, someone who is not you because they cannot be you. You are sure of this, very sure, and yet… You hesitate to do that, to put your hand forward and prove to yourself what you know. Instead, you stare at that person who stares back at you unblinkingly.

You note the hair, the lips, the hands hanging limply and feel the tingles go through your arm. The reflections are too different, too other to be your own. Those are not the hands you see and use everyday. That hair is not what slides through your fingers when you are tired. Those lips… You quirk your own just to see what it does and yet desperately avoid noticing. You jerk your eyes away in time and end up looking into the eyes.

The eyes… And now two moments blend, fade in and out eerily as you see yourself for a moment and then the stranger until the power of the eyes make you breathless and you want to look away and can’t but you must…

In sheer desperation, frightened of something–yes, for you are frightened and the ridiculing of your fears will only come much later–you reach out your hand and slap it on the surface of the mirror. Whether your hand goes through or not suddenly seems immaterial. For whatever it is, you are trapped.

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