Daily Prompt: Mirror Mirror

January 22, 2014 by Elizabeth Melton Parsons 39 Comments

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/daily-prompt-mirrored/ 

Look in the mirror. Does the person you see match the person you feel like on the inside? How much stock do you put in appearances? Photographers, artists, poets: show us MIRRORED.

Bernardo Strozzi – Public Domain

Stranger in the Mirror

The face looking back at me,
so haggard and worn.
I’ve not met this face before,
This stranger in the mirror.
Lines of care drawn by pain,
stretching over skin so grey.
I don’t know this face,
This stranger in the mirror.
Why does she stare at me,
with desperation and despair?
I can’t help her. I don’t know her,
This stranger in the mirror.
This face so sad and so beyond repair.
What does she want from me?
Why look at me so?
This stranger in the mirror.
In her eyes, I see the shadows of all yesterdays.
Grief, so bluntly written for all the world to see.
I’m sorry. I don’t know her,
This stranger in the mirror.
How can I help?
Looking back at her,
I see contempt for my lack of compassion.
I look deeper into the eyes of all yesterdays.
I see me.
Me, as I once was, happy, beautiful,
and full of hopes and dreams.
Startled, I jump back.
No, not me!
Just an illusion of things past.
I don’t know this face.
This stranger in the mirror.

Ó Elizabeth Melton Parsons