a bud frozen in the snow for a long, Perhaps its spring has come.

She slipped downstairs, tiptoeing on all fourteen marble tiles, until that varnished wooden door is within reach. She held its brass knob and pulled it, stepped out, bare foot, hair all messed up; she walked slowly along the roughly-cemented hall, wary of the sound that her heels make as it falls repeatedly against the grit. Eight, nine, ten strides it took to reach the door way. But before she walked in, she paused. She was hesitant.

The mirror was the first thing she saw upon stepping inside. It hung before her, the mirror that was big enough to cover the entire length of the wall, frame less, its age visible on some parts, stained and damaged, perhaps forgotten to be cared for.

She saw himself approaching it with dread – a ghostly shroud barely visible against the pitch black that envelops everything; everything but her eyes which seem to catch a faint stream of light from somewhere; everything but her eyes which seem to call forth a faint echo:

Seems so long ago that I used to believe, and now I’m so lost, just so lost inside my head; and I can't get out of it.

It was a sudden dawning; for memories tend to get buried, and the mind, too crowded and dusty from the accumulated rubble, piled up, as days flow into years. Yes, minds rot and decay much like souls and hearts. Hearts forget. Hearts, indeed, get distracted.

And she snapped out of her stance, reached out to the one who stood before her, and then made her way back; out into the cemented hall where her bare feet crunched the earth, and inside the wooden door with the brass knob, and up the staircase, into her bed.

In the course, she realized that she needed not a glimpse of what might be, for it has always been about remembering what once were. She saw what needs to be done.

It will take a while to collect all the fragments of the woman (?) she once knew; but tomorrow she shall start getting her back.