The Mirror Lake and the Man Who Tried to Grasp His Reflection

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At the narrow throat where the blue lake spills into a small, restless stream, two black silhouettes hover in still air—mannequins adrift in the geometry of convergence. One hangs over the water, the other over land, as if the earth and its reflection each demanded a witness. The man’s right hand hangs open, fingers slightly curled in the ache of reaching; his left rests in his pocket, withholding warmth from the world.

He gazes into the distance, but there is no distance anymore—only repetition. Lakes within lakes, skies reflecting skies, the mountains folding upon themselves like origami of memory. It is impossible to know which layer holds the real water, which sky truly breathes. Perhaps none do. Perhaps this is what forgetting looks like: a landscape repeating itself until meaning dissolves.

In the east, patches of snow cling to the northern slopes, relics of an older season. They melt only by degrees, hesitant to leave the shadow of the dark forest. To the right, veins of red earth spill from beneath the trees—a wound in the mountain’s flank, ancient, exposed from when this land was a steaming tropical island. Now it bleeds rust instead of rain.

The reflections perform their slow mitosis, splitting and rejoining, as if creation itself were trapped in rehearsal. Down by the snowfields, a low cliff edges the lake; nearer, a stone ridge juts toward the hovering man and grazes his shoulder, like the earth trying to remind him of touch. Below, the line of alpine firs trembles faintly in the mirrored wind.

It is said that these lakes take centuries to renew themselves. The reflections, too, take their time—hundreds of years to fade and reappear, like memories resurfacing in the quiet mind of the mountain.

The man waits, hand open, as though he might finally grasp the thing he’s been missing: the boundary between self and reflection, the thin skin where water becomes sky. But the grasp never closes. His hand remains an empty gesture—an echo of wanting suspended in eternal stillness—while the lake below continues its patient cycle of forgetting and return.