I looked at myself in the mirror,
but the man didn’t step aside.
He stayed there, stubborn,
as if the house were his
and I just a visitor.
I didn’t know what to say to him.
He didn’t speak either.
He just held my gaze
with eyes I didn’t remember
having seen before.
You change slowly,
like a path as you start walking it,
without noticing the exact moment
it becomes a new road.
But I didn’t feel that change.
One day, I just wasn’t the same anymore.
Sometimes I think it was small things:
a song that got stuck in my head,
a conversation I wasn’t looking for,
an image that followed me into the night.
Things like that,
things that don’t weigh much on their own,
but they add up.
Then you get used to it,
the way you get used to the cold,
to saying everything is in its place,
even though inside something has shifted
without asking permission.
Before, there were things that seemed impossible.
Then they became difficult.
Then they stayed far away,
like blue hills you gaze at from a window.
And without realizing it,
I was already up there,
not really knowing how.
I don’t entirely miss who I was.
Truth is, I wouldn’t go back.
That man wouldn’t know how to live here anymore,
and I wouldn’t know how to carry what he carried.
We’d just get in each other’s way.
But sometimes,
when the evening grows very quiet,
I do remember certain things:
feeling accompanied,
believing that what I did
mattered somewhere.
Words echoing in someone
and not just off the wall.
Waking up first thing to a smile.
It doesn’t hurt anymore.
That’s the strange part.
Now I do other things,
and I do them better than I expected.
As if someone—
maybe that man in the mirror—
had secretly learned
everything I’m just beginning to understand.
And here I stay,
looking at him face to face,
not knowing if one day
he’ll let me pass.
