The Mirrors We Met

By Martina Frattura

We move through cities and towns full of surfaces that reflect fragments of the spaces and people we pass: shop windows throwing back a passing silhouette, windows lit up in the evening, puddles that turn the sky upside down beneath our feet for an instant, a stranger's sunglasses in which, for a fraction of a second, we see ourselves shrunk and distorted.

But we, too, become mirrors.

Others carry within them reflections of us: our gestures, our shape, and, more often, whatever our gaze happened to settle on in a particular moment. It is not a faithful reflection, but an interpretation. Each person retains only the fragment that strikes them, concerns them, or stays with them.

We are in constant dialogue with space: legs free to move, shoes made for elegant strides. The body learns the rhythm of a place, and the place learns to recognize our step.

Even dressed in black, a color that seems to absorb all light, we can still give off another kind of light. We carry something of the people we meet, the places we pass through, and the moments that stay with us. Every city crossed, every face encountered, every surface that gave us back an image of ourselves leaves a mark.