#65 Pretty, Right?

by Melanie Odhner

We loved each other in that mirror. In the mornings we stood side by side loving the reflections there. Told each other stupid bathroom jokes until we spat toothpaste all over the glass.

I broke that mirror on a day we hated each other. I was mad. I smashed it. You got scared and ran away. For once, you didn’t come back.

Oops.

So, a shattered mirror. Little bits of miss you, love you, hate you. Memories with newer, twisted sides starting to show. Pretty, right?

Wrong.

Glass flakes got mixed in with water from the shower, muddy water, because you never cleaned the floor behind the toilet. They make a squelchy crunch when I gather them in a paper towel. Some of them fall out every time.

Gotta throw away the frame, I guess. There’s this ugly silver-brown stuff on the other side of the glass, and hey, you thought that was light? You thought that was another world that just had perfect pictures of you standing next to me? It was wood and gunk and your imagination.

I’ll clear it out and try to forget, but in the real world, nothing cleans up all the way. It’s stuck in my knuckles, and I’ll never get all these fucking slivers off the floor. I tracked some into the carpet outside the bathroom door and five years later, I’m picking broken glass and dried toothpaste from my foot with a pair of dull tweezers.

Can’t make this pretty.