When you first see him, you think of him as Erised,
Like in your favorite part of the Harry Potter books.
There he stands in front of you, all you ever wanted,
But you know better than to think you get to have him.
There he stands, eternally right outside of your reach.
At sixteen, in a shit motel, you punch a mirror.
The mirror cracks, your hand starts bleeding, and you wonder
Is the mirror broken? Or are you the broken one?
The answer is yes. Common ground but you still don't talk.
You've learned your lesson. Mirrors never respond to you.
The next morning you pretend you don't know what happened.
Nobody asks you. Nobody has ever asked you.
You tell yourself you like that, but you suck at lying.
You keep picking fights with mirrors. People stop laughing.
You think maybe you like disgust more than amusement.
You look in a mirror, and the mirror's eyes are dead.
You wonder what trauma your reflection has gone through.
He looks even shittier than how you know you look,
And there's a knife in his hand where you've never held one.
You look at his black eye and think you want to fix him.
It doesn't take long for you to realize that you can't
Fix whatever has been done to the inside of him.
You can't do that for him, no matter how hard you try,
But you notice how he works to fix your broken parts,
In his own harsh and unforgiving way, and you know.
You won't know what it is you know until years later,
Sitting next to the most beautiful girl in the world,
Knowing that you cannot let yourself let her come first.
You catch your own eyes in the mirror and feel guilty.
You hurt her, betray him, and still aren't sure which hurts worse.
You stand in front of Erised, and you close your eyes,
Because the image that's inside can never be true,
But life is easier when you stop comparing him
To all the things that he cannot ever be for you.
You've punched mirrors, but your brother pulled a knife on them.
