Mirrored Pod

The room is wide, almost shaped like a circle. It is a bit longer on one side, with long white walls that are slick and shiny and look like the kind of thick, extra-strong plastic that is used to make spaceships and other environments designed to withstand extreme temperatures and settings. The only sound is the constant hiss coming through the cooling system, which keeps the space at 68 degrees. The artificial overhead light, which is bright white and perfectly coats every inch of the room in an equal amount of light hits the walls and turns into long strips of illumination.
There are no obvious angles in the room, everything is smooth and so white and perfect it gives the appearance of sterility. There are no designated walls, just one long surface without edges, one smooth line that encompasses me without beginning or end.
A wide blanket of thin, cream-colored carpeting stretches to each edge of the space, it is perfectly clean without any stain or indication of human use. Above it are sparse pieces of white and egg-shell colored furniture. Just a few chairs, a stream-lined loveseat, a smooth table made from the same material as the wall.
There is a small toilet hidden behind a door in the smooth surface of the wall. It resembles the type of small water closet found in airplanes, though it is smaller, just a few feet tall, as though designed for other creatures with smaller limbs or the ability to contort into tiny sizes.
The floor beneath my feet vibrates softy. I can feel the movements of the train that carries me and this portable condo-pod. Everything shakes in soft friction as metal wheels meet the metal rails. Every so often the compartment jerks suddenly, harshly, and I brace myself while standing in the open space beside the narrow stairs that lead to the lower level of the condo-pod.
Along the edges of the upstairs room are many pieces of broken mirror. They line the edges of the wall. Their jagged edges are a sharp contrast to the smooth, controlled design of the room. Some pieces of the mirror are embedded into the wall itself five feet above the carpet.
I can see my reflection in each of them. My brown eyes, pale olive skin, dark hair. I see a thousand images of myself in the room and I think to myself that I must take a picture and remember this moment. It is eternal. It must not be forgotten.

Mirror in the Garage

The interior of an old garage smells faintly of old wood and earth. The air is cool and damp although soft light still filters in from the row of windows on the very top of the garage door. The cement floor is cold. It is a pale gray color which is free of any oil spots or spider carcasses or balls of dust and hair. It is a large square space that is filled only with half a dozen white washing machines and an old couch which is a few feet away from being in the center of the space. The couch is facing one of the walls. There are no shelves of built-in wood cabinets. No boxes, no resting cars. The walls are covered in white drywall. The couch is long enough for three people to sit comfortably. But it is a stern couch that lacks comfort and padding. The sides have a thin layer of stuffing, but it is not fluffy or good for resting a head. It is somber and very straight. It does not invite a nap. The upholstery is tan. It is made of many woven little strings in varying hues of brown, beige and tan fibers that combine to form a tweed fabric. There are two people on the couch. They sit close, revealing their intimate knowledge of each other’s bodies. There is a young woman, she is slender and has shoulder length brown hair that is mostly straight but has a few waves. The man, who has his arm draped around her comfortably, has a black beard and long black hair that is pulled behind him in a pony tail. He has a black hat on with a short wide bill, the kind of hat made popular by leftist-guerillas in the tropics of Central America. He has a t-shirt that is almost hidden by a black jeans jacket, but left-leaning political messages sprout from the semi-visible garment. Both their eyes are fixed on the doorway five feet away from them. The door connects to the neighbor’s house. The door has a mirror attached to it and they see their reflection. Him, with his hat. Her, with her big brown eyes. They look into the mirror, but not only does their reflection greet them, but they see a portly woman. She is in the mirror, she is behind the door which is actually not covered in reflective glass, but tinted glass. She is motionless and staring at them. She has short blond hair and large breasts. Her wide stomach is covered in the fabric of her patterned apron. The couple looks into the glass and see her, they see the living room which stands behind her. She stares at them, at the couple sitting on a couch in a white garage.

Bathroom

There is a long hallway that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. On the right side of the hallway is a pale blond door. There is no handle on the door, just a smooth piece of shiny metal on the right side a little bit above where a handle should be. The door opens easily. From the wooden doorway, the room opens up into a triangle, the door being the point of the triangle and the wall six feet ahead is the base of the triangle. This particular triangular base is half-covered in a spotless mirror. There is reflection from the exact place where ceiling meets wall down to three feet from the ground where a two foot shelf extends from the wall. This is a place for handbags and diaper changing and for resting small children. The shelf is made from a very thick black plastic, strong enough to hold many tons.
There is a little girl sitting on the shelf. She is three years old. She has a mixture of white and pink skin and silky blond hair that hangs in small curls around her face. Her older brother is standing just in front of her. The little boy is five and he is putting red lipstick on her already pink lips. There are two women standing near the children. The women are eating out of small sandwich bags. Their hands dip into the clear bags and pull out small snacks and they tip their heads back and drop in the little bits of food. In between chewing and dipping and tilting their heads, the women talk and gossip about people that are outside the blond wooden door.
The room is really only a triangle on one side, the side to the left of the door. The other side of the room is a half-square and has two right angles. In front of this wall are three porcelain sinks. The sinks each stand on one smooth leg that tapers from a wide bowl down to a smaller point at the ground. The sinks are clean and cold and very white, but they are much smaller than many common sinks, and only stand a couple feet off the tiled floor. Perpendicular to the sinks are a row of three toilet stalls. The walls of the stalls are made of navy blue metal that share only a couple pale white scratches between them. The floor is covered in very small square tiles, most of them are white but there are a couple black ones every couple of feet. Hanging from the ceiling is a singular light, a lone bulb that hangs from the center of the room.
There is a girl in one of the toilet stalls. She is quiet, standing close to the narrow space between the metal door and wall, she watches the little boy applying lipstick to his sister and hears the hushed tones of women gossiping.

Powder Room

An archway leads from the main chamber to the bath and powder room. Just beyond its semi elliptical frown, the mirror shimmers, reflecting the world it can see, perfectly inverted. Around its edges, titian and cream colored seashells are arranged, framing the view. A large starfish adorns the counter, flanked on both sides by more ruffled seashells. Its top is void of cosmetics. Only a silver handled comb and hair brush lie waiting, attended by a row of empty perfume bottles fashioned of crystal and Egyptian glass. A velvet upholstered antique stool adds it’s own flourish to the baroque powder room. It is invitingly large, it’s fawn colored cushion, rectangular in shape, suggests that more than one lady could sit here if necessary. The cast iron legs bow flamboyantly, looking as if they wish to clearly demonstrate that they have held the weight of elegant women for at least the last hundred years. The bath is beside the powder room, through another open doorway. There is a Roman air about it, not only because it is larger than necessary for a solitary bather, but also because of the manner in which it is set in the floor, in the center of the room. The tiles are all white with blue designs like Dutch delftware. There are steps built inside the bath, like the steps of a swimming pool. They extend around the entire perimeter of the bath, which, like the stool and mirror in the powder room, is rectangular. The entire space seems to be designed for lounging both in and out of the bath. Tile settees are positioned with the walls as backings. Fresh towels and white terry cloth robes hang plentifully from ornate hooks on the walls. An additional surplus is folded and stacked on one of the four settees. They have been carefully laundered so that they are soft and springy to the touch and smell of unscented detergent. In the main chamber, the carpet is a pearly mocha shag which extends into the powder room. There are a pair of complimentary dressers, one tall and one short, both simple and unassuming in appearance. Fashioned of a dark stained wood they rest against their respective walls hugging their empty drawers and looking important. The short one is wider and supports a mirror. Strings of glass beads hang from the mirrors corners, (it too is rectangular). Both dressers are home to doilies, books of pressed flowers, and decoratively placed pearls. An antique crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling catching the light and transforming it into glittering butterflies. It’s lead crystals are amber hued. The bed is big and well dressed in a subtle paisley and tone-on-tone diamond jacquard comforter peeled back to reveal Egyptian cotton sheets. The thread count is high enough that they shine like ivory satin. In their tangled midst, nestled among the strewn pillows, two figures negotiate their positions in relation to one another. The man is both muscular and pudgy with the strength of a wrestler. His sandy colored hair has been buzz cut so that the rolls of flesh at the nape of his neck are visible when he moves his head. His buttocks appear to be a little flat and a long lions tale extends from above the crack. Completely nude, he alters his position as coerced by the woman who motivates him by rubbing between his legs until she can hold his erect penis in her hand and stroke it. The long blond hair cascading over her shoulders teases his skin. The bright red lipstick painted on her supple lips contrasts with the lavender corset and thong that squeezes her breasts to attention while leaving her soft rear exposed. Their negotiations are difficult and quarrelsome. A steel sword rests against the bedside, it’s point sinking into the shag.

Twisting Road

I am driving on a twisting, winding road in El Salvador with my sister.
The road is narrow and treacherous, plenty of people have accidentally driven off by a slight gust of wind.
We are headed over a mountain covered in lush jungle foliage and I have a birds-eye-view of the car. As I try to concentrate on the road, I take a quick glance at my sister and notice she is my mirror image.
She gasps as she remembers she has forgotten something, I wonder if we should head back...although I am unclear where back is.
Is it in front of us or behind us? It is clear that we have been here before..the end and the beginning are blurred.

Mirror

I am in an old shop, filled with old carpets from the Middle East and antique treasures.
There is a mirror I have been coveting.
I have dreamt about this mirror before or have some strange feeling of recognition that I cannot place. It is a large oval mirror, the size of an adult and it's attached to a solid base, so it can stand alone anywhere in a room.
I run my fingers over the carved, cherry wood....the woodworker has decided to make the edges into waves, resembling mermaid's hair. As I admire it, I discover a hidden mirror on the top- it can be pulled out or pushed back. When I pull it out, the bottom mirror is useless- it has stopped capturing my reflection and only in the square mirror on top can I see myself.