This is our mirror, and we love it as we love each other, and to kiss her without it is unthinkable now.

This morning, just a short time ago, I saw her body in our mirror. I know her body and shall describe it. It is a full body, not tall but not thick, either. Strong, with muscular calves from running and finely defined upper arms from swimming every evening. Her hair is black, and her skin is very dark, almost as dark as the ebony of the mirrorframe. When she spreads her legs, the skin is even darker there, black as the night is black, hiding the pinkest color within. Her palms are lighter, a tan color, and soft, for she does not work with her hands.

She is not a model, though; her beauty is not classic in nature. She is often overlooked, and when we walk together it is I who receive the stares. She tells me she is envious, but I know better. She is relieved not to be the object of desire for those who know nothing of her.

Her hair is long, as well, thick and deep in great curls that tangle easily, and she wears it in a great swathe of linen, rainbow colored, hiding it from the world. Only I can see her hair, and when we bathe I stroke my fingers through the tangles, massaging her soft scalp and kissing the back of her neck where the cloth rubs and where she is scarred from burns received when she was very young.

And her eyes, they are deep, a deep violet. I’ve never seen such eyes. When the light shines on them just right they are deep marbles, shimmering purple, and they hold my gaze so that I lose myself in them. I fell in love with her eyes before she ever spoke a word to me. She knows her eyes are like mirrors to attract the unwary, so she will usually look away. She tells me that men are the ones who stare, that I surprised her when we met, in holding her gaze, in seeking to know her through my eyes. I know she is right, for I use my eyes as a weapon, an ineffective weapon, that leaves me more lost than found, and I hide from men by staring through them, willing them down with my gaze. It never works against Ishtana. She is the one who holds the power here. Her eyes are unnatural in their power. When we make love, I avoid meeting them.

This morning, without meaning to, I avoided her eyes. It’s becoming a habit, and maybe she’s noticing, for her eyes must find something to hold onto, and more and more often, it’s the mirror they find.

She lay in our bed this morning with a sheen of sweat collected in the small of her back. I leaned across her body, my breasts against hershoulders, and I peered at the curve of her hips, watching the way the light caught the glistening sweat there. She had had a very difficult sleep, and all through the night I was awakened over and over again, by her clutching at me, hiding her face in my neck, her arms encircling my waist. I am a light sleeper and seldom sleep well when she is like this. She has demons she is unaware of, and they attack her in the night.

When the sun struck the mirror, it echoed out the light onto her lower back, and the drops of sweat glistened there. I traced my fingertip through them and tasted her salt. Her body releases the scent of olive in the night, from the soap she uses before she comes to bed, and her sweat through the salt tastes of that olive.

I kissed the small of her back and dreamed I was walking through olive groves, in Athens, in Sparta, long ago, with the sounds of men in the
distance, chanting their battle cries, and the women walking alone in the groves, dreaming of peace and plotting to withhold themselves for the duration of the men's insanity. To be with the poets away from it all, on an island, singing amongst ourselves, where it began, and Ishtana's body stirring from its sleep, a guttural purr radiating from below me, deep in her belly and up through her throat.

I licked the salt and rolled her over and pressed my face into the thick hair between her legs, breathing in the musk of olive and salt there. My lover, I whispered, and she parted her legs, her body sinking down into the bed, relaxing after the tension of her sleep. I felt her hands caressing my shoulders, and I kissed her gently, parting the folds of blackest softest flesh with the tip of my tongue, tasting her and then kissing gently downward, licking the warmth of her thighs. She pulled me upwards, to her mouth. She was looking past me at my image in the mirror. She was seeing me as I wanted to be seen, from behind, the back of my head, the curves of my shoulders and back. She must have been watching the back of my head before, when I was between her legs, but she has just awoken and is not yet ready to lose herself in pleasure. She seldom is.

She stared at the mirror, thinking something, and I never have access to those thoughts, those morning thoughts when she has risen out of her struggle with the night. One of these days, when I am braver, I will ask her what she thinks of when she stares at my reflection, or is it that she is staring at her own reflection? I often fear I am merely her shadow, that in her mind I hardly exist.

But I, too, like to gaze into the mirror while she gives me pleasure. I like to see her hair against my lighter skin. I play with her hair, tangling my hands in it and pulling violently when I reach orgasm, and the bliss is purer because I'm watching her there, my mind split in two, the image and the feeling splitting off, and it's that split which raises me over that threshold of pleasure.

I tried to ask her if it was like that for her as well, but she wouldn't answer. She won't talk about the mirror. It embarrasses her. I wonder, though, if without it she would stay with me. She feels nothing unless she can visualize it in the mirror. I know this and sometimes feel it as well, though I never speak of it.