Your reflection:
I look at that painting and feel that it’s staring back at me, or maybe it is the exhaustion, or knowing that I cannot find the right shades. Those mirrors around me are closing in, suffocating me within an asymmetrical and fragmented frame, about to rip the universe.
I put a bit of I on that canvas, but when I mix it with confidence and grandeur, I only get a delirium-shaped fear made of stone.
It’s illogical: when I dip my brush in mental strength, I solely paint the blindness of dogma.
When I apply it to emotional responsibility, I get narrow-minded excuses; none of this makes sense.
How could I strive to paint the vibrating colour of empathy to only obtain the darkest hue of judgment on that fabric?
Up to a point, I can intuit that path the paint traces, but if I draw my heart…? It is so strange… it’s a beautiful heart.
Perhaps it is rationality what’s lacking, so with an impeccable wrist movement, my brush goes to the pallette and gets soaked in rationality. I skillfully make the strokes, it cannot be that any other thing gets drawn on that canvas and yet… I can only see paralysis before me.
I try to hide inside an existence containing only myself, an absurd exercise –I should have known–, like getting tattooed to conceal my own skin, like escaping from my shadow by putting out a candle’s flame in the darkness.
Nonetheless, I hide, cowering inside me. On the outside time passes by as always: taking away what is irrelevant, and leaving what is essential.
Eons after that and still torn between fear and courage, I decide to open my eyes, but everything around stays the same.
Indeed, nothing has happened, maybe because the last thing I drew was paralysis. Perhaps I’m focusing on the wrong place and yet there is nothing else here.
But who is a variant of what and I can’t help but think about it.
I study my reflection in one of those many mirrors that bow before me in impossible angles, and that image seems to be in conflict: its silhouette constantly shifting, glitching between appearances.
It stops, fighting to reboot itself, but trapped and almost static, as if it was still trying to escape.
I stare into those eyes, that are mine.
I’m beginning to see a glimpse of something that terrifies me.
I look away, but where else would I look to? There’s only time here. Time and a myriad of mirrors.
I look at my reflection again, fear’s scent constricts my hear again, but I relax. And keep on observing.
Yes, there are things I don’t like there: mistakes, unlearnt lessons I think I know, there is a night ocean of cowardice.
There’s something I am not telling myself, a truth hidden there, in plain sight.
My reflection get distorted or maybe it gets real again.
The truth is found along with errors. It’s clear, shinning, and painful.
The reflection is rigid, fragile, and brittle.
And the truth and my mistakes examine me.
Challenges detach themselves from destiny; they choose us and face us, and then we get to decide how we act toward them.
I choose to destroy my self image and liberate the person within it.
I look at that fucking mirror and I shatter it.
Now I know that a good heart is not enough.
Now I undo words’ reality.
My arm bleeds and with this spilled life the colours on my palette start taking shape.
From now on my rage will be a love letter to myself.
Self-righteousness and judgment will be the opposite of understanding and empathy, which will always be side by side with boundaries.
I will walk, never again hiding from my own mistakes.
And friendship will be sacred.
Now I can create my work again while those mirrors around me start to burst.
Your reflection © 2025 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
