Will Donahue thinks that he has finally found love with a woman who accepts his blindness until his brother tells the truth about her looks—or what he thinks is the truth.
The idea for “The One Way Mirror” came from a chance reading of an anecdote. A blind woman related a story of a blind man she knew who had unceremoniously dumped his girlfriend after his brother took him aside and told him that she looked like a “dog.” Appalled by both men’s cruel superficiality, I wondered what was going on, sensing a deeper story beneath the surface.
I thought about how we navigate a world obsessed with visual beauty when sight isn’t available to us. Will became a man caught between his desire for love and a society that judges worth based on appearance—a standard he can never access but can’t escape.
Here’s a passage that captures this tension:
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[Will] thought about Jerome, who had been his roommate at a summer camp for blind and visually impaired teenagers. Jerome liked to philosophize into the night, his voice deeper than his years. One night, he dispensed with Nietzsche and Du Bois and came up with something of his own: “We live in a sighted world where everyone judges us with their eyes. It’s like living in a room with a one-way mirror. Everyone just watches us, and that gives them power. We gotta break through and take it back!” his baritone crescendoing in the night. A boy told him to shut up and go to sleep. Will never forgot the one-way-mirror.
— “The One-Way Mirror”
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You can read the print version in The MacGuffin Vol. 37.3 (Fall/Winter 2021 issue) by ordering it here, and an online version is forthcoming from Knee Brace Press in September 2025.
If you have any issues accessing either version, please get in touch. I’ll send you an accessible copy!
© Cristina Hartmann