SECOND SURFACE

People say mirrors don’t lie.

Mine hands me a girl

I recognize

but cannot reach.

She leans into the day

without the pieces I can’t find.

She moves through the morning

like a tenant with my keys.

The glass can’t keep her together.

Noise enters like a thrown chair.

A locker slams three hallways away

and my nerves scatter,

papers lifted into air,

no desk to catch them.

I reach for a word and come back

holding its outline.

I start explaining something

and loop—

again,

again—

watching it circle back.

Then I contradict it.

Then I apologize.

Then I can’t remember which version

was meant to be true.

The mirror admires my consistency.

I place my hands on the counter

to make sure they are still assigned to me.

They stay.

But they feel subcontracted.

Lupus did not bruise the surface.

It went for authorship.

Since the diagnosis,

my thoughts arrive translated

from a language

I once spoke fluently.

Details refuse the light.

Everything stands far away,

waving from the big picture.

In math, numbers wander off mid-problem.

In Spanish, the accents lift like birds

I forgot to cage.

Sentences leave carrying holes.

I used to be precise.

Now I am approximate.

I drop things I am still holding.

I forget mid-remembering—

I enter rooms already unsure

what testimony I meant to give.

Behind my eyes, the word lupus

works quietly,

a clerk pulling files.

Keep the face.

Remove the continuity.

My emotions have thinned.

Sadness remains,

dense and available,

sitting in every chair.

I try to feel like myself

and touch interference.

The girl in the mirror

could be trusted with a future.

She looks capable of nuance,

of follow-through,

of finishing her own thoughts.

I watch her with the homesickness of still being here.

Because I remember living there—

in a mind that held detail,

in a body that did not interrupt,

in a self that did not require retrieval.

Somewhere between lab results

and voices padded for impact,

I shifted half an inch to the side.

Everyone kept talking to the version

who remained.

Now I perform her daily.

I am applauded for it.

I fail inside the sound of their hands.

At night, I lie awake

trying to locate the original,

combing back through conversations,

through mistakes,

through the echo of my own repetitions,

waiting for her to step forward

and recognize the body.

The mirror, faithful bureaucrat,

hands me my face.

I take it.

I go out.

I try not to lose it before noon.

(2026/2027: Poem)

SECOND SURFACE