ebonised wood · 1860s? · the unused upstairs room
tall, oval, in a frame of ebonised wood whose corners have softened into the surrounding dark. the silvering on the back is gone almost entirely; only a few small islands of mercury cling to the glass, lighter patches on a field of nothing. it was the custodian's grandmother's, and before that someone else's grandmother's, and so on back into a parentage that fades faster than the silver did.
it reflects, now, mostly itself — a darker rectangle within a dark room, a long mottled surface that holds light without returning it. a person who stands in front of it sees only the suggestion of a head, no features, the way a face looks in deep water at midnight. it has stopped working as a mirror in the ordinary sense. it does something else instead.
the last person to look into it each day is no one in particular. it lives in the upstairs room that is not used. anyone passing the open door catches a glimpse of themselves not being there, and walks on.
field-note a mirror that has lost its silver is still a mirror. it has merely changed what it reflects. it reflects, perhaps, the back of the room — the side of looking that the working mirror could not show.