Great Teller of Truths

Looking past “me” was ordinary.

I wondered if a better land was just there

past hated arms and limp straw hair. This

was masochistic torture, to see myself

tantalizingly out of happiness’s light

stuck in a well of slimy (truths).

The sky shimmered pink clouds

tinged with gilded underside; or a meteor shower,

backdrop a navy ripple, silver moon

and jewel-blue teases—puddles where I stood.

The mirror’s wonderful secret was just there

so I pressed my face to the proverbial window, saw

a land opposite my own. It resonated,

frequency of want, of envy for its beauty

that I looked past “me” and clung to it

with eyes holding pleas of fear, sadness,

lacking. Eyes that wished a sultry depth anew.

That hazel is a parched moss—dying. And I saw

the mirror’s diamond world: my own reflection

nearer the vision of people from my land;

but not me, stuck on this side of wonderful.

If I stay here, still, unblinking, unfocused

could I discover it? (these years of dodging.)

The mirror has an answer: Oh, Teller of Truths.

At least, that’s what I hear, lessons from the wise

and weathered, those too occupied to stare just there

and wait for magic’s glisten. How do they know?

How does one know that time's gossamer

is a woven blanket, sewn by withered hands?

I will heed those words and curl ‘neath waiting.

Once, a flicker in my reflection

chased the truth of my land out and out,

like a freed moth to the belly of a hawk,

and so I glimpsed it, then;

And twice, a shadow moved in a black mirror,

and a black mirror reveals truths unfathomable,

so I watched, wary of revelation. Nothing

was still then. So thrice, I stand before liquid silver,

frozen, save for eyes and breath. So thrice, I stare,

willing stillness to open the secret wonderful.

So thrice I count the light, shadow, spirits,

wondering when I will see it (when will I see it?)

this endeavor toward the stare, repulsed,

gaping out of crystalline depths—me just there.

Oh, mirror, time has stolen me from me,

laid my soul bare upon your lap. Do you see it

whimpering as it meets your eye? I crave a blessing,

yet all I find is dry forest floor illuding comfort.

You say, I hold you in truth unacknowledged.

And I exist with a breath that pulses on your face

beating down the flush at being seen and known—

Unending is my own stare within your arms.

And as time gives me back a calm, fresh as wind,

I open wider. Oh, mirror, is that my soul,

laid bare upon my face? It is nothing in my periphery

just blur and this here, my own self at last –

and seen. It is a secret, I think,

that you have held in plain sight, or perhaps

shrouded in a mist of visions and tall-tales

of secret wonderful things; that in stillness,

the sages portend the ignorance of they who hide.

Oh, I see so much. You, Great Teller of Truths, who held me

in fragile grace, hidden as a flicker, a shadow,

years and my demands, and my tears over lies,

answering a whimper from wild, anguished thrashing.

You —

Here.

***