It’s not you…

I look in the mirror

each time I feel this darkness

descend, I know it’s not you

but the mirror

sneers and lies to me,

my reflection

haunted, incapable of compassion,

scorns and sniggers

whilst all the time never letting me go,

the mirror it seems

is the victor

in this battle, it knows

how to bring me down,

cashing in on the fact

that I must stare into the abyss

again and again, to lose sight of the dead and the forgotten

inside us all, the faint whisper

of what was hoped for when

first you began to reason

of what your life would be like,

could be

but never should be, for that whisper

is but polish to stop the dust from gathering

and obscuring what is true

inside the ornate

or underwhelming plain

frame.

I have been framed by the mocking silence

that comes from the mirror,

the distorted view

in my own eyes

a point of blank departure

and I raise my silver knife

to the point where my eye brows lay

and hope to my own eternal damnation

that the knife slips

or the mirror cracks from

ear to ear.

 

Ian D. Hall 2017