As I stare into the dense, forward mirror embroidered with the pearls handed down from my mother and her mother's mother at the reflection of a bronze, well-kept woman who glances down out of uncertainty immediately as eye contact is revealed- I remember. I am reminded of the young dame who once occupied this vanity eons ago. A maiden descended from maids turned housewife through evolution of dignity and a journey of realization of how much a curve in the waist or a batting of eyes can decide one's lifeline for love. You never needed affection and nightly harbored a salty distaste for the approval of fellow adolescents, no you were your own kept company. Despite your untimely, lonesome giggles uttered overboard from the ships of your lips which crashed into one another within each ambush of a wave of laughter as you strained to hold them at bay - surrendering and being pulled back and about by your crescent turned eclipse of a hand in an useless attempt to conceal your shipwrecked smile which brought about humorous accusations from the lips of foreign oceans where your lunar fingertips wouldn't dare to land. Thus, your countenance conceded further into the depths of solitude- falling and resurfacing onto "No Man's Land". Your innocence was brutally battered and slain in its chambers where it laid behind your ribcage-silenced- after your realization that this kingdom of the earth was corrupted with a lust for your amber, inner thighs and greed for your partake in recreational hallucinations. You refused to be one with the majority because you didn't want to get your hands soiled. You believed that you could be better than the commoners but you were tainted and told that you weren't the fairest of them all. You began to believe that your inner enchantress was cursed with the forbidden fruit of the second glance which caused you to alter yourself -you became vain for nothing. You learned this the hard way. Your denial of this futile accusation lead you to be tricked into thinking that in order to be a queen you must straighten your coarse hair and call another woman a mother of dogs or else your crown would be called bitter and urban and your throne become broken. Pour soul: you didn't realize you were ugly until they told you that you were, until they forced you to be. You were ahead of your time, baby girl. You didn't get the memo of the new trend of being a black orchid in the midst of a cotton field in southern rurals. Your mistakes became self-inflicted black and blue bruises upon your back so that you had no choice but to learn. You were once a child- who simultaneously yearned for attention and the will to want to be alone. Nonetheless you couldn't be alone, for unwanted thoughts had crept into your mind uninvited every so often that your lullaby towards a nights silence was the reasons that the next day's stars would be brighter.  Your ironic trigger-happy cynicism revolved into Russian Roulette as the struggle for sanity became barren thus unfruitful. You couldn't go out with a bang- you were a coward. An ultimatum with hell or high water, you swam at your own risk and increased the chance of being cast away into a typhoon of impurity where in your final moments your existence fluttered before your pupils and you know that you know how this voyage ends. You've been here before in this body of moisture it is revealed unto you your instance of salvation as you float upon the Jordan apologizing to the northernmost star for forsaking it’s guidance thus realizing that you are not weak but you’ve had enough. I know some things are meant to make you stronger, but you became torn at your own expense. Problems that were not your own begin to quarrel with lonesome because you knew you were needed but wasn’t told why. Your essence of virtue orbited into an uncontrollable loathing that was pulled into a sol of forgiveness as a last attempt for self defense recognition. Therefore, whatever you choose, go against your gut- you are compromised. Your mind tended to play childish tricks on you while your heart saw the greater purpose. Although, you didn't trust your heart for the belief that it was too weak and too fond of the mistake of becoming familiar with the word mistake. Which is why you should cherish your most underestimated organ because I know the price of walking in the midst of the forked roads: often wanting one side more than the other and choosing the vice you ought nought. Let it happen. Only from this pressure can you be reborn into a cold-cut, glass rock. Even then, will mankind lust after your stainless epithet and beauty only heard of through the vineyards overexposed roots that tend to alter a man's perception of your god-given value. Despite that only some will obtain the means to behold your rarity only to render you hostage as novelty where you perceive your worth but not your purpose. For this reason only, you won't look into the mirror as often. The distant memory of Adam’s ale haunts you in your stare as your hands become nautical and know that you never made it home.