The first time Sade became suspicious of the mirror, nothing unusual happened.
The room remained the same.
The table stood against the wall.
The candle consumed its wax with the same slow patience.
The reflection appeared normal as well.
That was what made him return.
For several days he found nothing.
He looked into the glass.
He saw himself.
He walked away.
He came back.
Nothing changed.
The explanation was simple.
A mirror was a mirror.
The explanation lasted longer than it should have.
Then a doubt appeared.
Small.
So small that he felt embarrassed writing it down.
He was no longer certain he remembered the exact moment he had raised his eyes toward the reflection.
He remembered seeing it.
He did not remember deciding to look.
He assumed it was fatigue.
The explanation worked for a few hours.
Then he discovered something worse.
He was already prepared to justify it before it happened.
That was the first thing that unsettled him.
The second was harder to admit.
He began using the mirror to verify himself.
Not his appearance.
Not his presence.
Not even his identity.
Something simpler.
He needed to know that he was still the same person who had decided to look.
The reflection offered no answer.
The reflection remained correct.
That was exactly why he kept returning.
Because nothing was wrong.
And yet the need remained.
For a week he avoided the mirror.
It worked.
The room became a room again.
The table became a table again.
The door became a door again.
He thought it was over.
On the eighth day he passed in front of the mirror by accident.
He was not looking at it.
Or so he remembers.
The strange part was discovering that he was already watching his reflection before realizing that he was doing so.
For a second he believed he understood.
The idea appeared.
It vanished before it could finish itself.
Only a sensation remained.
The sensation of arriving late to a gesture that had already begun.
That is difficult to write.
Not because it sounds impossible.
Because it resembles too many other things.
Decisions.
Desires.
Thoughts.
All those small actions whose beginnings we never actually witness.
I have to move my neck.
The sentence appears.
I look at the reflection.
I wait for the movement.
It does not come.
And for the first time I am not worried about my neck.
I am worried that I cannot remember when I started expecting the reflection to confirm something it never managed to explain.
I have to move my neck.
The sentence appears.
The movement does not.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
