Two eyes.
Two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two ears. That’s the funny thing about mirrors. Two arms, two legs, one stomach. They show you what you already know. Brown hair, freckles. Mirrors don’t lie, they tell the truth every time, that’s all they can do. Ten fingers, ten toes. They lie sometimes though. Or rather, they get my mind to lie to me. Two eyes. Two brown eyes, boring. One nose with one freckle I don’t like. One mouth that hides a crooked smile that I don’t like showing people. Two ears, too big. Mirrors tell me what to wear, they tell me how to do my hair, they tell me to suck in my stomach and puff out my chest. They tell me what boys like, what they don’t like. Mirrors tell me what I should like, but I don’t. I don’t like what they tell me. I sit there on my bathroom counter. Feet tucked under the faucet, knees pulled up to my chest, and I stare. I go over and over my face and my body and listen to what the mirror tells me. I try to smooth my unruly curls, but they come back angrier, they don’t like being told what to do. So then I get frustrated and I let my anger seep out through my eyes. My eyes get puffy from the anger and the tears and my mirror tells me that that’s not pretty.
But there is another voice too. He tells me things too, things that are different from what the mirror says. He tells me He likes my eyes; He likes that color of brown, like chocolate. And He points out the green underneath the brown, a surprise. He tells my He likes my freckles, the way they dance across my face and the way they’re only there if you really look, especially the way that one danced too far and dances in my eye now. He tells me He likes my crooked smile, He likes the way my lips curl a little when I laugh, when I really laugh. He tells me my ears are a good size for tucking my curls behind, and He likes my curls too. He likes the way they get when the wind blows through them, wild. He says He likes other things about me more though. He likes the things on the inside. He likes my personality. He likes the way that I hum when I eat. He likes the way that I light up when I talk about my dreams to Him. He likes the things that the mirror doesn’t see, He loves those things. And sometimes I listen to Him, but most of the time I listen to my mirror, because the mirror screams and He whispers. So to amplify the whispers and silence the screams I covered my mirrors. I covered them in brown paper and Bible verses, letters He wrote to me about how beautiful He thinks I am inside and outside. And for fifty days I won’t look at myself, I won’t let the mirror tell me what it thinks. For fifty days I’m listening to what He tells me, because He tells the truth all the time, He doesn’t lie.
Two eyes.
