Fourteen times you lifted the glowing rectangle, and fourteen times I held the pose you asked for. Arm braced. Shoulders rolled back and down, which, I want you to know, took the trapezius muscles doing real work while you thought only about the angle. I liked that part. For those few seconds you were actually inside me, feeling where the strength sat, instead of watching me from somewhere behind your own eyes.
But then you stopped breathing. You always do this at the mirror. The lungs just parked, half full, waiting on a verdict from a face two feet away. I kept the heart going anyway. That is the arrangement. You judge the reflection, I keep us alive underneath it.
There was a thing you felt in the stomach, a small cold clench, when the picture came back and it was not the one from your head. I don't know what the head wanted. I only know I got the memo, the little dose of sour adrenaline, and I filed it in the jaw, where you keep most of these. You will find it tonight, tight, and blame the pillow.
Here is what actually happened in that room, from where I sit: you were warm. Blood moving fast and bright through everything. Legs still humming from the good work. That was a whole animal, thriving, in a mirror.
You didn't post any of the fourteen.
That's alright. I was there for the part before the camera, the reaching and the pull, and that part I keep, no angle required.
One thing, when you get home. There is a thirst I have been mentioning quietly all afternoon. A glass of water. Just the plain kind.
I'll do the rest.