# Reflection I wait for you in the mirror— that backwards world where everything wears its shadow like a second skin. Here, light bends into shapes I almost recognize. A hand reaches through glass that isn't there, touches a cheek I've never seen. In this province of reversed names, I am both the watcher and the watched. The room breathes in reverse— exhaling what it never inhaled. You come sometimes, unbidden, wearing borrowed faces, speaking in the language of erasure. And I, who have memorized every corner of this inversion, still cannot say if what I see is memory or merely its echo. The mirror keeps its secrets well. It shows me only what I've already lost— rendered backward, made strange, made almost beautiful in its strangeness. And when you finally leave, I remain here, caught between the real and its reflection, uncertain which side of the glass I've always truly inhabited.