Elegy

The day my mother died, I heard her voice in the mirror. It was an upright looking glass in the corner of her room with a stand to keep it steady. While my father and doctor huddled around her bed, I walked over to the vertical mirror and sat in front of it. I touched the glass with my little fingers. It was cold and smooth, and it sang. I listened as it hummed a lullaby I often heard as a babe. Streams of tears appeared on my face, tumbling down and down my waterfall cheeks. My father knelt sobbing beside the bed.

I saw myself age in the mirror. Harder lines appeared on soft cheeks. I looked eight, maybe ten. My fist blushed red from the mouth of another girl. She did not know my mother, but spoke about her. The mirror sang, but I could not hear it over the girl’s blather. So I shut her up to hear the melody.

A few more years passed in the mirror. I was about sixteen now. My knuckles were still red, but it was mine now, cut up by shards of glass. The mirror looked broken, and the fingers of my hand curled around one of the humming shards. It sang across my wrist, and fed its melody into my veins, so that when I wanted to hear the song, I wouldn’t need the mirror anymore. I could open my arm, and the my mother’s throat would play. My veins became violin strings, and a blade was my bow. I was terrible at playing, so I practiced everyday. And each time my mother hummed, I cried.