“It’s fascinating how light works,” I tell him. I go on and on about the mirror and its ability
to reflect a clear, crystal image of me and the silhouette of my brother’s hunched body. Orange
light from the sunrise follows his every movement. Turned away from the mirror, he eats stale
croutons while listening to live television updates from the war in Afghanistan. I wonder if he
still thinks about our life before his deployment: our family trips, our competitive chess games,
our love for the outdoors. Lately, he startles at the smallest sounds, whether it be the click of the
lock on the front door after returning from his rehab appointment or the light switch that turns
our home dark.
      “You’re eating those again?”

       I try to spark a conversation, watching him crunch on another crouton. I receive no re-
sponse. Turning my gaze away from the mirror, I find a figure mindlessly staring into the

troubles of his past. He sinks deeper into the couch, lethargic and idle, yet his eyes hyperfixate on
each new explosion emitted from the screen. “You can turn it off, you know?” I say, nodding
toward the television. His fingers begin to tremble, and his grip tightens around the glass cup
filled with water. Still, no response. His eyes dart beneath the shadow of his hair like a caged
animal desperate for freedom. I almost tell him to close his eyes, but before I can, the glass slips.
It hits the floor with a hollow crack, sending fragments of glass shooting into the screen. The
mirror rattles from the shockwave and falls, casting a brief image of the sunrise before shattering
into a dozen reflections. The television shuts off, and a pool of water begins to form around his
bare feet. My brother doesn’t move. He stares at the contorted, static image, the gunfire and
detonations still bleeding through the unbroken sound.
     I stand frozen before the pale green wallpaper that the mirror once adorned. Without its
reflection, the room becomes an empty box filled with a loud silence. I kneel beside the shards.
In each piece, a distant, distorted image of my face twists and bends. All of a sudden, tears slip
down my brother’s face as he rushes towards me. One tear hits the edge of a shard and blurs the
image of our bodies in a tight embrace. The light still finds us in the fragments, though it no
longer knows which one of us it belongs to.