"MIRROR"

Fragile girl, such evasive eyes
with your gaze of burnt-out embers.

A slave to ritual obsessions,
you can’t hide your thinning hair.

In front of that oval mirror
wearing the robe spun with sins,
your image reflects hatred,
sharpened to the edge.

The stoked fire melts you,
transforms you into seething lava,
and your cupped palms are corroded
by the shame dripping through.

In the state of delirium
you pull out your anxiety one by one,
terrified when you discover at your feet
a hundred mangled strands
in the image of wilted vines,
and poison ivy.

In the delusion of your dreams:
they slowly climb up your head,
embedding their roots
finding the depths of your scalp,
disguising your barren follicles
with a hairpiece; it’s fake.

The shadows of the inferno
drag your corpse past your cruel reality,
and the faceless voices, condemn you:
"Freak, deformed by your fragile mind!"

Injected with pain, you relapse
into that compulsive behaviour
and defeated, you bury in the crypt,
your secret.

In a book left abandoned,
threadbare and dusty,
your hopes are written
in a poem without verses
without spaces,
and the hope awaits you, hidden,
in the reflection of your mirror.

© Elena Vargas