The boy walks along the sidewalk; jagged pavement and broken concrete slowly pass under his feet as he shields his eyes from the graying sun. The buildings to his left and right appear and fade with the unswerving regularity of a bus schedule, and indeed, the buses truck back and forth along the street and sidewalks as the boy continues walking.

It’s a block, two blocks; startling monotony and pacing fall to pieces, broken glass on a shattered floor, as he stops suddenly, his feet rebounding from the curb with the finesse of a predator. A tiny glimmer, a speck of silver, and he’s bending down to the gutter to pick up-- something? a broken mirror, with little over one-third of the shiny metallic reflection fallen away.

Sandy brown hair, missing tooth (fifty cents from the tooth fairy), and a puzzled face all stare back at him from the plated sliver of reflection.

It’s as he’s flipping it this way and that—perhaps there’s more to this wonderful find?-- that he notices, with the black glare from the sun casting a deep shadow on the cover, his features start to mature, deepen, expand and contract with the passing of an unknown time.

His once unruly hair becomes trimmed and neat, his teeth become shaped and white, his face takes on a professional demeanor.

And as the boy holds the mirror, standing on the sidewalk between the bustle of the shops and the clutter of the streets, he sees the face become attached to a body, the portrait in the mirror pulling away until a busy office and a busier man are all that are witnessed in the cracked mirror.

Frantic, the man is rushing around, pushing at lighted buttons on his phone, screaming orders into a cell phone as he pounds at a suicidal keyboard. His hair is neat, trimmed, and refined, as are his shined shoes and crisp suit. But his eyes and temple are lined with worry, as though the weight of the world rested in his hands and heart.

A secretary enters the extravagant but poorly-decorated office and quietly whispers something to the businessman. The man, as the boy watches, collapses in his chair and draws his head into his hands, worry evident in his tightly-closed eyes.

And as the boy watches, the secretary leaves, and the man reaches into his cabinet to slowly lift something-- a pistol?-- and the boy’s throwing the mirror on the ground, stepping back into the street, letting the blare of horns and curses fill his minds and not the final images of the mirror.

He stands a foot or two away from the mirror, just enough to see that the dying grass and chips of pavement reflect clearly in the mirror, not hampered by the age of the item.

And it’s only a second before he’s approaching slowly, waiting for the right moment to snatch the mirror and finish the frightful scene.

With the mirror in his hands, he holds his eyes to it, anticipating a blood-stained wall or clear blue eyes to stare back at him, but the mirror’s surface is blank, white, as though it were a piece of unlined paper he held in his hands and not a possessed relic.

But again, the image shifts and blends with the winds blowing around his hair, no doubt run-off from the street, but he’s looking at a different picture now. It’s not a funeral home, or, as he fears, the final moments of a finger-squeeze, but a kindly, albeit worn man looking back at him.

The sandy brown hair has been slightly shortened, but gone are the shined shoes and generic business suit. In it’s place is a working man’s uniform, a blue and gray affair with a collar and nametag. The boy struggles to read the title, but the scene again pulls away, and he sees the collared man working at a mill, his hands lifting the heavy equipment with practiced ability. A bell sounds, it seems, as the man stops his labor and waves goodbye to a co-worker or two.

The mirror’s scene does not end here, as the boy watches the man continue to walk past the doors and head home. In this age, it seems as though everyone has a car, but this man walking is quite refreshing and unexpected, a jewel in a land of industrial waste.

The boy continues watching, and the man arrives home, to the arms of a kindly-looking woman and two very happy-looking children. Their hair is sandy brown, their teeth missing, and they look overjoyed at the opportunity to spend time with their father. He tussles the small child’s hair and hugs the older child before the images began to fade to a sharp white.

The boy stares the mirror for a while, desperate to retain some of the happiness evident in the family’s lives, happiness, no doubt, due to love

It’s as the boy waits, with the mirror held in his trembling hands, that the picture again starts to fade in, this time to a black, a shiny black from which no light escapes.

The boy stares at the blackness of the mirror for a long time, unable to find release from the horrific sadness and loneliness trapped by the color. Tears form in his eyes, but he’s unable to catch them as they fall from his chin.

Time passes, the sun sets in a blazing display of red and yellow, but the boy continues staring. So much heartbreak, indecision, worry, and panic, all encased inside his hands. And the boy fails to notice the flashing image of his face, terrified, ghostly, pale, an image built to inspire futility, before the image blends with the black to create the darkest shade.

To call the color black would give midnight skylights and 1000-watt bulbs.

“What do you have there?” asks an approaching stranger, his overcoat turned up around his neck and chin, all the better to defend against the cold, but allow in the heat.

The boy, shaking, rips his eyes from the surface of the mirror and the images he isn’t seeing, not noticing that he’s dropped the mirror back into the gutter.

“Let me see that,” says the man.

The boy, still crying, smashes the mirror underfoot.

The boy continues walking.