He does not blink when I look away,
He waits in the silver, cold and grey.
A twin born of light and polished sand,
With my own face and my own hand,
But his eyes are weighted with things I’ve buried—
The ghosts of the many lives I’ve carried.
He anchors my gaze, a relentless hook,
Demanding a price for every look.
“Where did you leave the man you promised?”
He asks with a silence, brutal and honest.
“Is this the skin you meant to inhabit?
Or just a shadow you happened to grab at?”
I try to shave or brush the day’s grime,
To kill the clock and outrun the time,
But he stares through the iris, into the bone,
To the dark, quiet basement I leave alone.
He asks of the bridges I burned for the spark,
And why I still whistle when crossing the dark.
I have no maps for the roads he names,
No clever logic to douse his flames.
He knows the secrets I’ve folded and hidden,
The words unsaid and the paths unbidden.
I am the jury, the judge, and the liar,
Watching my soul through a circle of wire.
I turn off the light to make him depart,
But the questions remain, etched in the heart.
The mirror goes black, the surface is thin,
But the man in the glass is now under the skin.
2009 -