Reflection

I don’t know if you ever loved me or if I was merely a mirror in which you gazed at your own light, the way my eyes made you infinite.

Perhaps you didn’t love me, but the man reflected in my eyes when I loved you.

And I, who loved you until I forgot myself, lost myself in the light I gave you, without realizing that, while you were discovering yourself in my gaze, I was disappearing from my own.

And one day I understood that it was not my destiny to keep your light burning at the cost of extinguishing my own. That loving should not be an act of disappearance, much less one of giving your heart away until you are left without a name. And perhaps, if you ever loved me, it was in those moments when you stopped looking at yourself in me and looked at me. But if it never happened, if I was merely the place where you learned to feel loved, then I will have to accept that there are stories in which one person gives their soul and the other merely discovers the reflection of their own.

Now I want to return to myself. To look at myself without searching for you. To recognize my light without needing anyone to become infinite in it. And if someday you return to my memory, let it not be to ask myself why you didn’t love me enough, but to remember that I knew how to love deeply. And that, after you, I also learned to offer myself all the love I once gave you.

Victoria Inaudi October 2026