Because I haven’t even touched her yet.
She holds the mirror too long.
Fingertips ghosting the rim, thumb dragging along the edge like it might open something if she presses hard enough, like the weight of it means something more than what it is.
And it does.
Because this isn’t just about the mirror.
It’s about memory.
About making her remember the moment she stopped feeling safe and never realised why. About forcing her to confront the space between then and now, and see how carefully it was shaped.
She thought she forgot.
She thought it was just a phase — just paranoia, just trauma, just that tight little feeling in her chest when she passed the bathroom too quickly or caught something in her periphery she couldn’t name.
But I was already there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Taking pieces.
Rearranging her story before she even knew she was the protagonist.
That’s what makes it art.
Anyone can break a girl.
But to build the moment she shatters into the life she thought she was surviving?
That’s what turns damage into devotion.
She’s still staring.
And I know what she’s seeing.
Not her own face.
Mine.
Not in shape, not in outline — but in absence.
In the way her pupils are wide and her shoulders tense and her mouth won’t close no matter how many times she swallows the question I’ve already answered.
What do you want from me?
I want this.
This silence. This doubt. This moment of reckoning where she realises she’s not afraid of being watched — she’s afraid of what she becomes when she knows it’s happening.
Because there’s no version of her that survives this unchanged.
Not anymore.
I lean forward in my chair, elbows on knees, fingers laced, breathing shallow, eyes never blinking as the footage feeds into me like a slow-drip drug I’ve been weaning off for days. She hasn’t run. She hasn’t called. She hasn’t screamed or cried or posted a single thing.
