Magic Mirror

Who Am I?

I may tentatively tell you

Who I once was

Where I’ve been

What I’ve done

Who I desperately wanted to be

I have meticulous memories

Of isolated incidents

Complete with emotions

Desires

Accomplishments

Disasters

Every perfect detail of things I didn’t want to know

And those I only wished to be true

I may cautiously present

The ghostly personas possessed by ‘shoulds’

I  thought I ought to be

I’ve desperately tried to be

I know I’ll never be

But I don’t know which

Of the broken pieces of my reality

To keep

To discard

Are completely ingrained

Or were never mine

The illusion

Was nearly perfect

To a casual observer

Or a master denier

Camouflage, untouched

By tears

Or Rage

Or longing

But now see

While a magic mirror illuminates, with sincerity

Inside the façade

Beyond the frozen mask

The world tilts at an impossible angle

And nothing is what it seemed to be

I want to pretend

To lie

To scream, that is not my reflection!

But I only gaze at what is not there

A child’s complexion

Adolescent hair, dark and full

The dimpled knuckles of a toddler

That is what was

But what is

Is Ordinary

Middle-aged

And completely unsure what to hang on to

In this topsy-turvy landscape

I dart through the twisted halls

Of my internal dwelling

Straitening the crooked images

Hanging copies in empty corridors

My purpose in question

My motives askew

My sense of self as tenuous

And fragile as dust

Scattered in the swirling wind