Mirrors are for other people.
I found your body.
It was coated in papier-mâché, sealed in a locked box. I always had the key, but I couldn't remember what it was for, as if the information slipped between my fingers. I couldn't see you under it, but I knew you were there, your presence being one of the few real things I had felt in years.
I tore through the remains with violent fervor, shredding through them like tearing into meat. Words began to fly off the pages, some that I recognized, some that I didn't. I barely even knew what I was doing, my subconscious trying to thumb through a reality that I half-remembered. I had to know, I needed to know, but I couldn't deal with all the knowing.
There was a twenty-dollar bill in there, some blank notebook papers, but they were all crumpled with intent. The ones that stuck out to me were the banal ones, little things that made me reel. I never knew you took a Spanish class, but your handwriting was right there in a language I don't speak. I saw names I knew you went by, and I saw names that I didn't know you went by.
I cut myself on one of the pages, globules of blood falling off my finger and pooling on my desk's wooden surface. The slight tilt of the legs meant they kept flowing down into a puddle, fat chunks of red pooling onto the carpet as I lost myself in your ephemera. I kept digging and digging, drilling as if I was meant to find something, as if it was fate that I would finally know something about you.
All I found was the tidbits, the wrappers, little splotches of ink and graphite... but it made me feel closer to you. I finally tore all the way through, piles of paper coating the walls, covered in blood, sweat, piss, and piping hot coffee. Not one of them meant anything, most of them having the permanence of a piece of gum in a car cup holder.
Nothing ended up lying under the glued up pile of dead trees. I swore I had found your body- I did find your body, it was right here in front of me, in the empty space filling my thoughts.
I stared at the murdered remains, gathered them, and put them in the recycling bin.
I threw out the key.