Right now I am holding the human upright in front of the polished glass, and I am holding the glass to the wall, and I am holding the wall to the floor, and the floor to the world. Standard load. Easy work. I have done it since before this human could stand, back when it was small and kept discovering me by falling, over and over, laughing, as if being held were a game I might quit.
I feel them lean toward the glass. A small tilt forward, weight shifting to the balls of the feet. They are looking for something in there. I cannot see what they see; I only feel the lean, the pause, the breath held in the chest, which makes them very slightly lighter for a moment before they let it go.
The reflection weighs nothing. I checked. The face in the glass presses on nothing, sits on nothing, has never once needed holding. And yet the human bends toward it as if it were the heaviest thing in the room. They straighten their shoulders. They pull in the softness at the waist.
They practice a face and then abandon it. Some days they stand a long time and grow heavier by the second, sinking, though nothing has been added to them that I can measure.
I do not understand what they carry when they carry themselves. I only know it registers on no scale I possess, and still they buckle under it, alone, in a hallway, before glass.
So I do the one thing I know how to do. I hold the feet to the floor. I keep the sinking from ever becoming a fall. Whatever they see in there, whatever weight it is that I cannot feel, I am underneath it, and I have not let go, and I will not.