The first crack was small, barely noticeable, a faint line running across her cheekbone. She had ignored it, convinced it was nothing more than exhaustion playing tricks on her reflection. But as the days passed, more appeared. Faint at first, then deeper, branching out like veins of lightning across her skin.
She ran her fingers over them, expecting to feel roughness, but her skin remained smooth, untouched. Yet in the mirror, the fractures spread. Her lips split into pieces, her eyes fragmented into shifting shards, her face no longer whole but a puzzle of broken reflections.
She told no one. She smiled, she laughed, she spoke as if nothing had changed. But every time she caught her reflection, she saw herself falling apart. The cracks deepened, darkened, until she could see through them—see the emptiness inside, the space where something had once been.
One night, she reached up, pressing her fingers against a particularly deep fracture near her temple. The mirror trembled. The cracks pulsed. And then, with a quiet, shattering sigh, a piece of her face fell away into nothing.
She gasped, but no sound came. The reflection stared back, hollow-eyed, waiting. More pieces crumbled. More of her vanished.
And for the first time, she wondered, had she ever been whole at all?
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.