by J. D. Mahieu

Created on: July 01, 2008

The man in the mirror looks just like me. We do a lot of the same things, he and I. I can see him step out of sight just as I go to start the water in the shower. He walks back into view as I step up to the sink to brush my teeth. The man in the mirror looks the way I feel. Spent, rejected, loathsome. He drudgingly scrubs the cavities located opposite of my own.

As we stand facing one another, dutifully going on with the mundane routines from the day, week, months before the man gives a slight nod, as if in passing. The steam emanating from the shower stall obscures him. Details fade.

The joyless eyes cloud over. The empty smirk grays to the same monochrome world that has surrounded the man in the mirror. Intrigued I watch as his figure becomes an outline, nothing more than a darker silhouette in a room of smoke.

For a moment I sense power, control. Long forgotten feelings of self worth. The man in the mirror could be anyone. I could attempt to change the reflection, bring a new man out of the mist.

I reach for him, my open hand moving for his featureless face. As my open hand inches closer he raises his palm in warding, shielding himself. I pull my hand away, holding it open to show him I mean no harm and his hands come away. The colorless visage gives the little nod again. This time when I reach, my fingers make it to the glass. The wet and warmth of the condensation combine with the cool smooth surface of the glass, an odd contradiction on my fingertips.

My index and middle digits come to rest over his eyes. I push against the cold mirror absorbing the heated moisture from the figure in front of me. The man in the mirror returns the favor, reaching out to draw me a new set of eyes. The eyes staring back through the gap in the fog look familiar again. Reaching out again I trace an appropriately goofy grin onto the silhouette before me, the smile I remember. When he finishes mine the two of us take a step back to view the results.

The man in the mirror IS me. Again. His new eyes, my old eyes, reflected back through the holes in the steam. The wide toothy grin gleaming out from the slice in the haze in once more my own. The silhouette in the smoke is the first real reflection I've seen in years. For one I see me in the mirror, not my hair line, not my waist line, the bottom line.

So there he is, the new man in the mirror. Me. An obscure outline of smoke in a room full of fog. Only his sunflower eyes and knowing smile shine through the dismal condensation on the glass. A new man waiting to be shaped.

Renewed I finish undressing and slip into a now scalding shower. The painstaking process we move through to clean our selves complete, I step out. The whole room the whole room now reflects what the mirror had shown. The steam is so dense the door across the small room is almost completely obscures, instead only resembling the idea of a door. Just a darker rectangular shape hinting at the anomaly.

I stride to the outline I think I recognize as the sink, stepping in front of the mirror. He is still there. With all the steam its hard to tell who is who. The eyes pressed into the fog on the mirror have begun to drip, streak downwards. The condensation growing ever heavier on the smooth surface of the glass finally lost the fight to gravity. The loopy grin had melted away, becoming his signature strait line, neither frown nor smile. The tracks of moisture run further away from the sunflower eyes shining out from behind the foggy glass, in their decent they wipe away the steam, letting pieces of the real picture show. The man in the mirror is weeping.

And now I'm the reflection. The faux tears soon reflect real ones. Now I'm the one crying. The man outside the mirror looks a lot like me.

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