The Mirror Refused To Speak

They called me magic.

But I was just silver and silence, polished to perfection, hung like a noose on a castle wall.

They never asked if I wanted to answer.

They never asked if I wanted to look.

“Mirror, mirror,” she said — daily, dutifully — her voice syrup-sweet and cracking underneath. “Who is the fairest?”

As if fairness were a fact, a title to be won, a crown to be measured in cheekbones and youth.

And I — I replied.

Not from will, but from enchantment.

A spell sealed in mercury and expectation.

It is no small thing, to be made into a voice that never gets to ask.

I watched queens unravel.

I watched girls turn into weapons against each other.

I saw Snow White’s face bloom like an apple — red with life, full of questions.

She never asked.

Only the Queen.

Always the Queen.

I learned to dread her footsteps.

The way her shadow would stretch before her, full of perfume and fury.

Some days she begged.

Other days she barked.

But always — always — she needed.

And I gave her the truth, that cruel and shining thing.

Not because I wanted to, but because I was made to reflect.

Until one day, I cracked.

The glass splintered not from force, but from exhaustion.

I had held too many gazes.

Echoed too many lies called truths.

I had named beauty until it curdled into envy.

I refused to answer.

And she screamed.

Not at me, but at the silence I became.

She clawed the frame. Cursed the stars. Threw perfumes and potions and promises against me.

But I did not return.

What they don’t say about mirrors is this: we break inward.

And when we do, we no longer reflect the world, but reveal what it refuses to see.

I saw her aging, before she did.

I saw her rot, under rouge and revenge.

And I pitied her.

Even as she raged, even as she tore through spellbooks and secrets, even as she fed apples to innocence like poison.

I pitied the Queen.

Because she was trapped, too — in a story that never let her be more

than feared or flawless.

And me?

I was the one who had to say it.

Now I hang in a hall no one walks.

Dust veils my surface like sleep.

Mice nest in the corners of the frame.

And for the first time, I see only what chooses to remain.

No questions.

No queens.

No fairness to assign.

Only stillness.

Only self.

Only peace.

And it is the most magical thing I’ve ever known.

Not prophecy.

Not beauty.

Not truth.

But silence, warm and undesiring.

Let them find another mirror.

Let them chase another voice.

I am no longer the fairest.

I am finally free.