Reflections

 

One window locked
on the inside: promising

to keep the world out
she is struggling back-to-life.

In the mirror’s reflected image-
her face is a perfect blank,

her eyes unfocused into mine,
mine into hers, generating

a motion sickness-of sorts
so much for trying-to fool myself.

Mirrored similarities and
stories tell of a sad girl-she

a familiar stranger
I’ve known all my life.

Yeats described her well
and her tormenting hell;

melancholy is a pretty name.
She is beautiful: I love her.

My hands: clumsy
like oversized garden gloves

on narrow wrists
trace a downward smile

upon her lips-against
her cold mirrored flesh.

What a beautiful girl
fully dressed: made up-makeup,

beautiful disaster in raw flesh
with no clothes on: scarred.

I am her and she is me
our thoughts are but the same

our shared soul: perfect
under our tattered clothes-

by clothes I mean flesh-soul.
Reflections cannot capture this.

 

© 2010 Lyndsey Warren