You can be replaced

You can be replaced. There are enough reflective surfaces in this city to leave her here at this desk, and deep within that apartment, to watch until she gets up to put her shoes back on, clean out her tea cup, and get into bed, or return to working. These places were not for her body. She saw reflections of them and herself outside of them in unshuttered windows and wavelets on the sea. As she walks she is standing there at the door or prostrate there on the bathroom floor as windows and mirrors recede. She cannot see the sequence of reflections and distortions that stride backwards closer to the sea with each step she takes up the continuous hill, but it depends on the imperfections and subtleties of everything she passes, windows hung crooked or drawn inward in shrinking refrigerated rooms, mirrored doors ajar or swollen slightly out of their jambs, water vapour against a sun warmed puddle. She cannot see herself returned to the origin, awakening late afternoon, only each stage of the arcing sun, each detail in which she saw her self captured. The history of the day continuously multiplying in reflections depends as much on her memory and catalogue of these minutiae as she does on the assurance that she may continue to move further away while everything behind her continues.


Critical Response:

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