Edema Rue

I was sitting in a castle. I looked up, and I saw a mirror. And in that mirror, I saw myself. Only, it wasn’t me, not really. I was onstage, surrounded by people. Front and center. I was speaking, and they hung on my every word, and I raised a dagger and they gasped. The mirror was perfect, glowing and round and edged with gems. 

I turned, and there was another mirror. This one was bigger, more dramatic. In it, I was writing, writing, always writing. I held a quill and a bottle of ink. I wrote worlds, and I stopped being afraid.

I wandered through the hallways, looking into a thousand mirrors. Each one was a different, skewed person, and yet they were all me. 

I stood on a podium, holding a trophy.

I sang to an awed audience.

I sat at the center of a crowd.

I was alone, peaceful, a dagger in my hand.

I looked into the mirrors and saw a thousand lives.

And I cried.

There were mirrors for that too.

It made it worse.

Because in each different mirror, none of the others were present. 

In each life, there was no sign of everything else.

Each time, I had made a choice.

And I didn’t want to choose, even as I looked at all the joy. 

I sat in the center of a vortex of light, torn between every world that could be, and yet never will.

And then, rounding a corner, I saw another mirror.

It was not tall,

Not grand,

Not edged with silver or gold.

It had no jewels in its frame, no frame at all, in fact.

And in that little mirror, I saw a girl

Dressed in white.

Bowed before a throne.

And on that throne sat my Lord.

And in that moment, I felt every mirror shatter. I felt every life collapse. Because in that moment I stopped being torn. In that moment, I chose. I looked in the mirror and I swore to that girl that she would exist. It didn’t stop hurting; with every mirror crushed, shattered glass fell like rain. It tore through my skin, muscle and bone, it tore me to shreds and it hasn’t stopped hurting. And the glass didn’t leave, didn’t stop as it fell, it cut in and it stayed, invisible and deadly.

I chose my mirror, chose to serve, and with my choice a thousand people that have never lived never will. A thousand lives I’ve never had have left me for good. A thousand bridges burned. 

And in the midst of the smoke and the blood and the shards of broken glass, I smiled.

But the glass keeps cutting, and there are still little pictures in the little pieces, little lives that pull me close. It still hurts, and through the tears I know that it always will. But I chose a path, and I choose to smile at the pain, even as it rips my heart to pieces.

It will heal.