Reading the Reflection

Here’s my submission for MJ Polk’s weekly Stories from the Jukebox prompt:
Mirror by primalbeet.

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My camera doesn’t lie.
It just takes the three-dimensional experience and flattens it into 2D. Maybe that’s all I can handle.

The mirror has never told me the truth.
Or maybe it tells a truth, but not one I know how to read. They say to look in the mirror as if the mirror is neutral, as if it hasn’t been reversing the story the whole time. My good side is my good side in the mirror, but not the camera. So do I even have a good side.

I don’t trust it when the mirror says I look fine. I’ve only ever trusted it when it said that I didn’t. When it exaggerates or it minimizes or it catches me mid-blink, calls me a frog—I take that to be gospel. If I halfway look okay, I need seventeen different angle checks to see where it’s lying.

Everything in the mirror is backwards.

Try braiding your hair or curling it or pointing to anything with confidence.

Backwards.

I know where I want to go, but the reflection pulls me the other way. Like this morning, I’m standing there with a curling iron trying to get a little bounce. And I know I should be moving it toward the ends, but my hand keeps moving toward the roots—because that’s what the mirror seems to ask for. And the harder I try to correct it, the more wrong it feels.

But for a moment, my hair does look perfect in the mirror. Big. Southern. Door frame threatening. The kind of hair that says, yes, I belong here.

But 15 minutes later, gravity and genetics win and my hair returns to its natural state, which is fine. It’s always fine. Even if I don’t belong anymore.

It’s not that the mirror is lying.
It’s just maybe incomplete.
It tells the truth it can tell, and the rest has to be trusted somewhere else.

The mirror reverses things.
The camera flattens things.
Neither one of them knows the full story.

And I’m still trying to learn which reflections deserve my trust, and how to move in the dimension they leave out.

Here’s the mixtape.

Mirrorball — Taylor Swift
Paper Bag — Fiona Apple
Unpretty — Jelly Roll
Something More Than Free — Jason Isbell
Both Sides, Now — Joni Mitchell
Kodachrome — Paul Simon
Mirror — primalbeet

I don’t push all my stories out by email. I’d like us to remain friends, so I don’t want to crowd your inbox. You might have missed my New Year’s Eve tale. Here it is. I hope you like it.

If you haven’t checked out Stories from the Jukebox, you really should. You can start here.

Mirror