Hall of Mirrors

Job lost. Marriage over. No work, no love: no hope. Yet none among us hates like the font of fetid scorn in your mind's abyss. We are gargoyles who blur and sharpen in your suicidal eye. But demons are fictions you've invented as you you've reinvented yourself: so often you can't find among your selves the real one, no trail of bread crumbs to your gingerbread heart. Seeking truth in others' faces is to court the eye of madness. And if our one thought is to kill the pain, we must be careful what we wish for lest we kill ourselves, too. Now you must walk backward through a hall of mirrors, realizing in the jagged rush there is little strength in scrutiny, less for perseverance. But persevere we must. If you've no work, make you your job. No love? Send yourself valentines. And if there's no hope tell yourself it's a lie, just as everyone hated you: we've love you always, only you didn't see. Make peace with your enemy; you share his heart, mind and bed. In those gray hours when you can't discern an image in the shards of desperation it is temporary; if night is real then so is morning.