Article Title:
Infinity Couldn't Hold Me

Why does the mirror before me reflect the past behind me? My shadow is cast upon a wall. My secrets are trapped in that lonely gray shape. And, when I turn around, why does the mirror behind me reflect the future before me, a future I can’t see? My endless dreams are unfulfilled. My eternity aches with despair.
If I place these mirrors in parallel spaces – if I step between them, will I be held in infinity? Eternity becomes infinity when it stretches in all directions. Infinity is the continium that I have to find, because only then will I know why I am no longer who I once was – why I will no longer become who I once wanted to become.
For twenty dollars I have bought body-length mirrors of identical design.
I place them on opposite sides of my room until they are perfectly parallel to one another. I pretend that I am outside in the wilderness, away from every broken thing and every bitter one. Is it midnight? In my mind the moon hangs softly in the sky. Her crescent shape, like a tear falling down on the black night. The stars are white freckles spattered onto dark cheeks, and I know my eternity is watching me with sad, invisible eyes.
I close my own eyes and step between the two mirrors. I hear summer leaves crunch beneath my feet – hear the summer breeze rustle through the leaves that hang on trees – hear the buds that will be leaves sprouting from branches…
And then all falls silent as I reach the center of the space between the two mirrors. I am no longer outside – I am no longer in the wilderness of my wandering thoughts as I open my eyes. There is stained carpet beneath my feet and peeling paint on the walls and the fan swings from my ceiling with soft light and harsh creaks. Within my view are an infinite number of reflections – of images made up of the same image. Only, each image is smaller than the one before it, larger than the one after it. They stretch on and on and on...
My gaze falls into infinity.
I hang there, then, in a limbo of irregular space, where I have finally met faces as frightened as my own, sighs as soft as my own, souls as lost as my own. I go back and forth between my past and future. Every image reminds me of an innocent child, a broken adult. Every moment that passed and will come to pass is etched into a spiraling pattern of reflections. My gaze flickers wildly as I try to take them all in. I call out to each of them, already knowing whose name should pass from my lips – already knowing the words that have passed from their lips, every screaming lie and every quiet truth.
Disoriented; I begin to wonder – who was I and who will I become... Who am I? Real or reflection? A creature of flesh or only a creature of imagination?
I feel as if my limbs are not my own. I lift my hand and a multitude of hands lift with mine. I turn and twist in an attempt to get a better view of the faces before me, but the closer I get the less clear they all become. Those faces and those gestures, they belong to some phantom – to an alien self that haunts my past and my future. Infinity has breathed every possible moment and thought to life. Who I was and who I will become are just a myriad of selves in different points in space and time, seemingly.
Am I the continuum?
I step forward, because I need to find her etched into one of these reflections. In one of these frames is someone with dark skin and hollow eyes – soulless, visionless, hopeless, me. I press my hands against the mirror. Let me stay in the quiet – in the solace of infinity, knowing where I begin and where I end, because neither beginning nor end exists. There is only an organic being who lives and breathes and feels – feels nothing.
Something has pushed me over the edge.
What began as a game suddenly grows into wild belief. For twenty dollars can I reach into the past or future and escape the present? The monotony of my existence: I walk down the stairs past family and friends and into a world full of strangers; then, back to a home and heart full of, too, strangers; finally, up the stairs and back into a four-walled room that doesn't hold anything but a stranger.
I punch through the barrier – I shatter my reflection – I break, blood.
I am bleeding.
A blank, off-white wall appears in the space I have made with my fist. The carpet is littered with tiny shards and slivers of glass. The swinging fan aches and creaks. I wonder if it will, as I walk past it one day, collapse onto my tired existence. The mirror behind me remains whole, but my vision of infinity is gone. When I turn to look in the mirror behind me, I only see myself.
There are no more infinite entities of me.
And I, I am unrecognizable.
I turn away from the mirror that remains. I am fragmented and shattered, blank and lacking color. I can only move forward while all the moments that had birthed a new self or a new dream lay hidden in the past, and will never be born again in the future. Invisible fists have erased all chances for my infinity to hold me – quiet punches I can neither feel nor see.
So I break the second mirror, angrily.
I fall into bed, feeling foolish – feeling useless.
Do I really – will I really live this way?
I look for acceptance in a reflection of images of myself, because I have never met anyone else quite like myself. And when I did, he was too beautiful, too far away to really see me. I got close enough to see him, though, and I try not to remember the way he made me smile a smile that stretched across my face and creased the corners of my eyes.