You stand beside the mirror each night, pale and fragrant, gazing at the lily that blooms behind the glass. You have always believed it to be your other self, delicate and unreachable, sealed away in that cold silver depth. So you keep vigil for it. When darkness gathers, you open your petals wide as though your small softness could shelter it from harm. You offer it your beauty without knowing you are giving away your strength, and with every silent act of love, you grow a little fainter.
But the lily in the mirror does not watch you with hunger. It watches with longing. It presses close to the glass as though it aches to warn you, to stop you, to tell you that every kindness draws the life from your stem and gives it form. It does not want to take from you, yet it cannot help becoming more solid each time you choose to save it. Where you wither, it begins to bloom; where you fade, it is forced into fullness. Its sorrow is that its life is made from your undoing.
