The Mirror

As I stared at the mirror
I saw my reflection.
It talked while my mouth was closed
turned while I stood still and
stood while I sat.

As I stared with my mouth open,
my reflection began to speak again
as she gently smiled at me.
“Hello,” she said softly
in a low voice.
“I'm, sorry if I scared you.
My name is Alle.”
“I'm Ella.”
To this day I still don't know how I managed to get those words out.
“I know,” she replied.
“I know everything about you.
Every time I go to sleep
my mind tunes in to you
like a television aerial.”
And she proceeded to explain.

“I live in a world that mirrors your own,
to a degree.”
She scowled.
“Your life
has always been better than mine.
Because in some places, my world
duplicates yours;
in others,
it is a mirror image.”

“I sneaked out of my
house and to the mirror of the worlds.
I'm using it to communicate
with you now.”
She grimaced.
“The problem with it is
that I can only talk to
you. Everyone else will
think you're talking
to your reflection.”

We talked all night long,
until finally,
I dragged myself
to bed. We met every
night for three years.
Then she disappeared. That night
she was first gone,
I waited until one 'o clock in the morning for her
and then slept all day.
Every time I saw movement
in the depths of a mirror
I'd whisper “Alle?”
But it was never her.

After awhile, however,
I stopped checking mirrors for her.
I lived a normal life for
seventy years.
Then, the night before my
eighty-second birthday,
I got up during night.
As I looked in the mirror
I wondered what I usually did:
Did Alle really exist? Or was I just half mad?

As I stared at the mirror
I saw my reflection.
It talked while my mouth was closed
turned while I stood still and
stood while I sat.