On the ride back home from the museum, your mother is silent. It's only at the traffic intersection, when you ask her if she saw anything she liked, that she begins to speak. She tells you that on her way to the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of a mirror hung on a wall. It took my breath away, she tells you. The moment is not urgent. But a red light is refracting into the window of your car, its knives of light entering your body before passing through untouched. Her voice is quiet with shame and longing as she tells you that for a moment, she thought someone had painted her.


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