The girl in the mirror

By Namrata Sarkar

I tell myself I am fine.

But why does the girl in the mirror cry?

When her brown eyes blink, a tear drops down her face. She wipes them, over and over again, until she gives up, for they never stop.

I wonder for a while but don’t understand, why does the girl in the mirror cry?

She looks at her arm, there’s blood and there’s scars; she feels her heart, there’s pain and there’s scars. She looks at me and smiles but I wonder, why does the girl in the mirror still cry?

Her muffled screams and voices don’t reach me. She wants to cry but her lips bend and form a million times practiced smile. She tries to look at me, for help, but I look away and I wonder, why does the girl in the mirror cry?

Her heart feels like it’s sinking into the blues and the deeps of her untold miseries. That’s when she catches my eyes and at that very instance, I realise that she is I. And she always wanted me to look at her, to search for the string that connects us. And now when I look for it, everything falls crashing apart.

I now look at the mirror and see a child who only knew a broken home, a few lost souls and friends who were nothing but a mere joke. I wonder if I could tell her that she was the kindest soul, stronger than the love that her heart could ever hold. I see her running away from me, the sound of her laughter fading away into the void, her footsteps slowly fading away into the void, her footsteps slowly forming far away from the world that she once lived on. The mirage dwindles into the passage of time.

I feel why the girl in the mirror cries.

I look at myself, the girl in the mirror, taking a glance at my bleeding arm and feel my slowly stopping heart. “This mortal realm never knew our worth” her whisper reaches my ear. I hear her. For the first time. And something tells me it’s the last.

She died that night but left herself within me; the broken child and the burnt-out adult. The ominous pain reflects in my eyes but does anyone ever try to look for they only dare to condemn, ‘why does the girl in the mirror have to cry?’.

By Namrata Sarkar