The mirror girl was cracking. The beating of her ivory heart shatters her very existence from the inside out. Her silent cries ricochet off the walls, falling on deaf ears. She watched all she touched crumble at her crumble at her feet, breaking her cracked ivory heart a little more. She struggled to put these pieces back together again, ignoring her own, hoping in vain that if someone else's pieces are fixed, so will hers.

The mirror girl was breaking. She bore the weight of a thousand trespasses on her back, her reflection the judge and jury. The trespasses, both imaginary and solid, past and future, cut into her shoulders and added age to her cautious gaze. Anvils, locked to her ankles by gilded chains, drab behind her as she struggles to continue her journey on.

The mirror girl was shattering before blind eyes. She reflected smiles she knew others needed to see. She reflected a wholeness she wished she had, one that she knew others relied on. She reflected false sunshine to drive out the darkness in others. Her own sunshine and smiles, and never wholeness, rarely broke through. But she fought to reflect it, to ensure that no one would break as she was breaking, to ensure that the sunshine, smiles and wholeness of others would be pure.

The mirror girl was crumbling. She laughed while she felt her insides ripping themselves apart. She joked while soot infected the cracks in her heart. She buried the fog that nearly blinded her and the pain her smile tried to reveal. She tried. She failed.

A quiet explosion shimmers in the fluorescent light. A few heads turn. Many don't - they keep walking in blissful oblivion. They all move on.

The mirror girl is gone.