Reflections of Choice

by Roger B. Rueda 

I am the cold glass
above the sink in a rented room.
Not a holy thing—just a face-holder,
a silent watcher of what your fingers do
to a stranger’s body or a broken toothbrush.

I don’t choose. I hold. I show.
You come to me wet, crying, half-shaved,
your cheek pink with apology or rage,
and I give it back.
I don’t ask why you said it.
I don’t ask what she said to you.
I just shine it back, the vein
in your neck twitching like a cable
tight with decision.

You want me to lie sometimes.
You want me to blur the blood
from your mouth when you yelled,
to fog the glance you gave your son
when he dropped your name like a plate.
But I don’t blink.

If you are kind,
I show your hands cupping the cat’s face
like it’s a loaf of warm bread.
If you are cruel,
I show the smudge on your temple
where you hit the wall, or worse,
the place where you didn’t.

Every choice is a body-part
leaving its fingerprint on me—
not metaphor,
but real—the oil of it, the salt.
I keep your truths. I keep your shame.
When you smirk, when you break,
I am the old lover who sees it all
but doesn’t stop you.

This is not punishment.
This is gravity.
This is light bouncing back
to where it began.

So come to me.
Not to admire yourself—
but to know.

Every time you act,
you breathe a line across my face.
I will carry it,
until even you
cannot look away.