Looking right back at 'ya

With no new novel at my disposal to delve into this week, I found it rather fascinating that at a time I’ve been reflecting on reflections (no pun intended) and mirror images, I chose to pick up Trezza Azzopardi’s novel Remember Me which I read a few years ago. I’d glanced along the shelves, and as this was one for which I couldn’t remember the storyline, thought it well worth revisiting.

I wasn’t long into it before significant symbols were cropping up, foremost among them that of mirrors, both remembered from the main character’s childhood as well as decades later in her old age. How the shards of a broken mirror reflect a fractured self, an image in fragments, not the whole, how they can be full of sorrow, how the number of human beings gets multiplied just by looking.

Never trust a mirror: full of lies, just like the papers.

Lillian avoids mirrors, somewhat threatened by what the reflection represents, wondering whether what she sees is really her. Whether the essence of what makes her who she is, is standing on this side of the mirror looking in, or lost inside the mirror world. She senses her other self in the mirror, beckoning her, daring her to come.

As a child, in the dead of night, a week after she catches a glimpse of her ‘stand out in the crowd’ red hair now bleached blond, she plucks up the courage to climb on a chair and seek out her reflection.

It’s too late now to stop myself. Not edging up into the glass. Not going sideways like a thief, stealing in from the corner of the frame. I will face her straight on, wide eyed….to let in the light from the darkness….I have to be sure she wasn’t just hiding, trying to trick me. But I can’t see a single thing. It’s black as a hole. No one looks back at me, there is no one on the inside. I get as close as I can, trying to see through the mirror, to see through it and beyond it, beyond the glass sheet, and the silver, through the wooden back of the frame and the rose wallpaper and the chimney and out through the brick and into the night. Trailing specks of mortar, black ash, dust, flying in the darkness to seek her out, find the girl, show her that I am me.

Quite apart from being a great piece of prose, it begs the question Who am I? Am I comfortable in my skin? I know as I get older I spend less and less time in front of the mirror, only stopping long enough to make sure my hair isn’t sticking out in too many directions before heading for work. As the wrinkles etch deeper I wonder about the dreams the younger version of me had in decades past, and if those dreams are still not fulfilled, why they were left by the wayside. Another poem came to life from all these ruminations.

My spirit shell upon the wall

beckons me to come.

She dares me to come looking,

has power over me

taunts me for the life unlived

time stolen, gone for good.

Is she trapped inside her wooden frame

Or am I trapped out here.

Does she wonder what I wonder

has she done the same as me,

Or has she lived a thousand dreams

that I could never see.

Do I take from her the years of life

Or does she take from me

A little piece of skin and bone

in order to be free

from that nagging, sinking feeling

that by drawing in my breath,

there’ll be more and more

of her to see

and less and less of me.

Do her lifeless eyes see nothing

as we watch each other’s moves.

Do we sneak a look occasionally

does she smile or disapprove.

Are my secrets safe there on the wall

does she want me to be free

Is my image there my lifelong friend

Or my enemy.