In the Spare Room

There is an old mirror I keep in the spare room
The kind with the smooth oak frame,
Cool to the touch and perfectly shaped.

When you’re not around I like to go stand in front of it and reorganize my thoughts.
I look through the glass at a pathetic excuse for a lover
With flaws enough to fill the empty space in our bedroom
And eyes that have darkened with each sleepless year.

Hate.
Disgust.
Malice.

I scrape my body until it’s raw,
My skin destroyed by my own hands
Which are shaking with regret.
I cannot stop this spreading emptiness.
There is nothing I could use that would cut so deep into my core as to make me feel anything but this awful uncleanliness.
This otherness.
This cursed body.
This wretched soul.

I cannot stand it.

I throw myself against the glass,
Shattering the pathetic reflection inside
And leaving hundreds of fragments separated by veins with sharp edges that
Cut my fingertips as I run my hands down scattered lights,
Numb to the feeling.

Stepping back, I can see everything.

I think I like this reflection better,
With its thousand repeated smiles and shining eyes.
You can hardly see the truth through the web of veins that weaves this new existence.

And I can feel.
The cuts on my body burn in a way much harsher than when the glass made them.
But I can feel.
The lines draw maps in red of where I’ve been,
But not who I was.
Not who I am.

And I smile because perhaps I’ve found my escape
In this fractured reflection I’ve created,
In this thousand-times-repeated smile.

Time passes
And I can breathe again.

But then one day you weren’t there
And I was lonely.
I went to find solace in myself
Only to find that the reflection had changed.
It was no longer my shattered glass world inside the frame,
But a new pane of unbroken glass,
Flawless in every way.

And again the eyes.
And again the eyes.

Gone.
My beauty.
My solace.
My perfection.

You’ve taken it all away from me because
“The broken glass looked dangerous," you said.
“I found this new one for twenty," you said.

What were you thinking?
Who are you to show me who I am?

I’ve been replaced
With a twenty dollar pane of glass.