Written by Leah Baker

Art by Lillian Anderson

              “We weren’t supposed to be able to see ourselves,” say the believers.
Animals and humans weren’t meant to know their own visages,
and humans may have lost something when
we began to polish bronze flat and reflective,
setting the stage for future collections of hand mirrors
and easy-access front-facing cameras.
We hope for mirrors to be evil
to harbor terrible doppelgängers and 
to be subjects in scary stories.
We want to go crazy looking into mirrors for too long,
to snap back in fear of seeing an otherworldly self
creeping out. 

I’ve never been afraid of losing myself in a mirror,
only of seeing something out of place.

Supposing we weren’t meant for this isn’t enough for me.
Who was it that sat back in terror when someone first knelt to their own face in water?
Who was it dreading the day we’d learn to see the back of our own heads? 
             “Remember, remember that beauty is not everything. People were never meant 
               to see ourselves every day. Remember how fish fight their reflections. Remember how cats 
               scratch at the glass. Remember how,” beg the believers.

Vanity shouldn’t come so easy to me,
I want to doubtlessly believe I feed into no beauty standard—
that the strange parts of myself make up for the things that are promised.
I’m not the type of beauty that makes sense, 
but I like to be seen and to see it, too. 

I have done too much work to accept that the outer look isn’t everything.
I don’t want to wake up and know I shouldn’t have so many ways
to look into my own eyes. 
On no day soon will it really be true, 
that beauty means nothing,
but on no day soon will I try to make it so.