Reflection

I used to be so sure

Of everything;

Of my world and all its contents.

I used to wake up from refreshing sleep

And smile with self-satisfaction at the mirror.

I used to look deep into the eyes of my reflection,

Through a camera lens crystal clear

And see a world, so beautiful, so perfect.

I used to walk along a path, delicately paved,

Each stepping stone aligned just right,

The way I liked it.

That land was a wonderland,

A dreamscape, if you will.

But dreams don’t last forever,

As I’m sure you are aware.

And now, as I peel my eyelids apart

After restless nights,

The turmoil of my sleep

Having seemed to knock the lenses out of focus.

The angles are all wrong now.

The smooth roads crack relentlessly,

And I trip at every turn.

The soft lullabies of weeping willow branches

Turn into screams.

The light spring rains

Evolve into thunderstorms of tears.

The gently rolling clouds

Suddenly turn into clusters of smoke,

Black and gray and sickly yellow.

My world is filled with smoke and mirrors,

Screams and tears.

Where did this haze come from?

I have no idea.

But it chokes me.

And it chokes my reflection,

Suffocating its clarity and perfection.

I lost the one thing I thought I would never lose.

I lost sight of myself.

Now, I stare desperately at my reflection,

But my eyes are only as deep as the glass.

Sestina- Frosted Glass

A floating figure cloaked in translucent brilliance

Glides over the land, crowned in glimmering silver.

She dances a graceful duet with her own shadow,

Then she descends over the land in practiced silence,

Her every step quieter than the whisper

Of a pin as it hits a floor made of glass.

She reaches out her fingers to a stained glass

Window, admiring its polished brilliance.

But to the glass she offers the slightest whisper,

Which clouds it, transforming it to icy silver.

She stares at the mirror in awe, barely noticing that silence

Had fallen with the night, leaving her in cold shadows

Realizing, she touches her crown, then turns to the shadow,

“Is this what I am crowned for?” She asks the looking glass.

But only her reflection in the ice stares back, silently.

Suddenly, her mind, once free and filled with brilliant

Thoughts, feels trapped underneath her wreath of silver,

Longing to once again chase the wind’s whisper.

She flees her thoughts, flying past branches whispering

Desperate warnings as she plunges into the shadowy

Night. She doesn’t know she leaves behind a silver

Streak of frost and coats bare branches with glass.

She doesn’t know, until she turns around to a brilliant

Snow globe scene, her doing, standing in frozen silence.

It dawns on her that her coronation is not a gift, but a silent

Curse, to steal the breath of even the most cautious whisperer

And from everything else around her, to turn nature into a brilliant

Picture, but only coloured in with white and shadows.

Beautiful as it is, it may as well be carved of glass,

Captured and drained of life, with only a dusting of silver.

As her cursed fingertips turn the entire world silver,

She can find no words to speak, despite her silencing

Everything around her. The rose-coloured glasses

She once wore have disappeared without a whisper,

Leaving her alone in a land darkened by her own shadows.

To think she could have been something brilliant.

With a sigh, her glassy eyes turn towards the land of silver;

Sparkling, brilliant, crystalline, icy, cold, motionless, silent.

“Winter has come”, she whispers, then vanishes into the shadows.