At first, love is so precarious. A house of cards, baby steps, so fragile the wind might whisk it away. But real houses have scoffolding. Babes learn to walk. If the storms don't come - and sometimes even if they do - the love stays. Those little mud houses weathered by thousands of years and sit bearing the marks of their inhabitants. Did they die there or did they move on? Make new houses, new artwork, growing handprints in the mud. What was our love? It wasn't the building we planned, it went all off schedule. The scoffolding came down and we couldn't recognize what was standing before us, like a maze, like a museum, like a murder house, it seemed full of ghosts, a place better left alone, better boarded up. But when we turned the knob, when we come back, the door still opens and we recognize the furniture. I went and built more houses and you stayed here, and I pretended it wasn't a prison, and so did you. Prisons aren't a choice. The paintings are covered in dust, the books are dormant, old letters tucked away, old letters you said were gone, but I only found them when you left. The house stayed strong even as you grew weak. The bones of our love shook in anger as your bones begain to show. People say old buildings breathe when they settle, is that the sound I hear when I close my eyes, or is that the sound of your breath, the hum of machines that keep you alive. Our home has no name, no address, this great secret we built that has become my secret grief. People can see you break apart and they don't know that behind you my whole life is breaking apart, this unlisted place that we kept behind the shade of the distance between us. I can count the ribs in your chest, I can see the flutter of your heart behind the skin, no more muscle to hide it away, and I wonder if it will beat faster if I hold your hand tighter. When you left, I almost couldn't tell, besides the color gone from your lips. Your eyes stayed open and drug heavy, but your lips turned white. The power has gone out. I am supposed to shut the windows now, brick the fireplace and block the rooms, but I finally move in to the place we made for us and now is only here for me. What is prison without any inmates, a graveyard without any bodies, a body without a soul. I take your place and tidy up in a home I never could bring myself to stay in with you, and now I stay in alone, and wonder if you are on the otherside, getting a room ready for me.

Sometimes lies are necessary. White lies, like white magic.

Dinner was delicious.

Everything is going to be alright.

The worst is behind us.

They're in a better place now.

I love you.

The person we all lie to the most is ourselves. On a Thursday morning in the fall, a woman walked down the isle of a small church in Connecticut. Old women cried and children squirmed in the pews and the minister had to pause the wedding rites as a motorcycle drove rudely by. He asked the couple if they would like to read their vows, and the woman said yes, which was surprising to everyone because she was not the type to write something sentimental. She did not disappoint.

"I don't really want to marry you. I'm thirty-three years old, and I know you won't ever cheat on me because I'm probably the best you can do, so I'm settling, but I know it's wrong, so nevermind."

"So nevermind?" It wasn't exactly the most eloquent way to put it, but she didn't wait around for a critique. After she walked out, the best man leaned over to the groom. "Well, thank God for that."

This was to be expected, ever since two months ago, when the hallucinations started. Psychiatrists everywhere began hearing the same claims.

"My mirror talked to me."

"You're talking to yourself? That's normal."

"No, just my mirror."

"What did the mirror say?"

"The truth."

Bloodshed was an inconveniant side-effect of self-awareness. Some people are much more angry then they let on. Once the news spread, some fought against it. Unhappy couples everywhere banished mirrors from their houses, didn't want to hear the truth of their own affairs and petty arguments and years of carefully cultivated passive-aggressive power dynamics. Before long, people used their mirrors more often than Google. Moms recommended it more than the Bible. 'Ask yourself' took on a whole new meaning. Unable to hide behind flimsy excuses and half-assed rhetoric, middle-aged men admitted long-surpressed sexuality, young women confronted cheating lovers, teenagers told their parents how utterly frustrating the slim prospects of their lives were, and politicians found and shed religion like summer coats. Old marriages fell apart, new ones sprung like leaks. Small chat became pointless. The most commonly heard mirror-talk was you don't really give a damn how your neighbor feels today. It didn't feel so bad knowing everyone else felt the same way. Like a wild-fire, the chaos raged for years, then settled into a slow calm.

Lovers lie intwined in sheets, whispering to eachother.

"Are you sure?" One would say, and they could feel their hearts beat against heaving chests.

"Yes." And it was so.

On a small island in the Indian Ocean, two sisters lie on a beach staring at the sky. The waves inched closer but even they didn't dare touch the girls' delicate feet. They only paid homage then bowed away slowly.

"Are you sure this is the best use of your time?" Said one sister to the other. "They are probably all going to start a massacre any moment."

"They already do that that." It was a fair point, a rare moment of wisdom from the youngest child of the family. "He said he wanted me to try something new. A fresh set of eyes and all that." She was playing with the stars, here a nova, there a nova, billions of miles away and all set to confuse the future. "Besides, if I mess up this one, we can just go to the next one." She picked a star at random, and raised her sister's wrist to point it out. "Like that one. It could do with a little life and color."

The elder stretched out her long limbs and turned on her side.

"It was an accident, you know. The lie seemed like a good idea. I didn't know they'd use it on themselves."

Her younger sister nodded. "Yeah, I know. They can keep the lie. But no more self-medication."

"Fair enough."