The Girl In the Mirror
Poor choices ride piggy back on lies,
holding my trembling frame against shame flaming walls . . .
A million smiles may paint the day,
but deep canyon nights hold no disguise;
a yellow smiley face veneer defies
a taunting chorus of demon jeers.
Looking eye to eye in the mirror,
my conscience dares not lie;
see her there, that girl,
the first she selfishly betrayed?
The demons on the doorstep, uninvited, move inside
and enact a day of dreadful reckoning.
I should have known you did not, could not love me,
so explosively you hated everything you are.
Such a foolish little girl to think
I had the skill to deliver your demented psyche;
feverish digging with a dinner fork
will not alter a mighty river's flow.
A warranty deed of failure accompanied our vows;
the home above the sinkhole slipped,
swallowed by hollow abyss.
Truth turned and slapped me sharply in the face;
the nights of dread, a love stone dead
loomed, defiant shadows, around my bed carousing.
Decades passed,
time looks back with penetrating honesty
from eyes of children grown;
painfully beautiful, their crippled spirits limp in careful dance,
dragging the dead lead weight of all my sin.
Oh, God! If I could dry the unshed sorrow, eye glistening,
of these others, dearest ever,
my selfishness betrayed.
Copyright, August 31, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
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