Pāhonoa te oro

In windows, in car mirrors, even in the black screen of my phone. He never spoke, but his eyes said everything: Why didn’t you save me? The worst part? Sometimes the reflection wasn’t him at all. Sometimes it was me — but not me. A version of myself that looked hollow, pale, almost… wrong. She would tilt her head, smirk, and whisper things I couldn’t hear but somehow understood. Things like “You’ll end up like him.” I stopped turning on lights at night. I stopped looking at mirrors.