mirror mirror

Every morning, you stand before the mirror.
You look at your face, but never closely.
there are things for dryness (your nose tends
to break out into little white flakes, Dead skin),
things to smoothen and hide 'beauty spots',
You recently bought something for the little bags
collecting darkness under your eyes, harvesting a
fatigued view of this world.
the liner keeps you from unwanted questions,
the new kohl pencil justifies a watering that
just cannot seem to catch a break. Salty.
the lips are allowed paleness. sometimes their
fruity flavours help change the now homely
metallic taste in the mouth. From too much coffee,
or a long pending root canal, or certain kinds of days.

in the day, you can hide inside a mirror.
it gives you an outside face you can carry
around for the world. But as night falls,
the mask melts, wears off. Even for the
bipolar mirror. Embittered by its own
hypocrisy, it will force you to come closer.
to look at yourself.shorn of comforting narratives.
and when silver truth peers at you,
sleepless nights are a foregone conclusion.

mornings must find you once again
before hallucinogenic mirrors
glossing over your losses,
making up for things that can never
in truth be made up.