Broken Mirror
Whenever I look into a mirror
I see you: Dad and Mum.
I savour the pangs of the damage you’ve done.
I become drunk with hate.
I break the mirror, hoping to break your faces.
But then I see more faces,
shades of your faces in diversity.
Then I realize I’d just broken an innocent mirror.
I try gathering the broken pieces,
but they never come together again.
What is broken is broken.
When I peer into the broken mirror,
I see multiple faces,
I hear multiple voices of me,
I see a thousand bodies of me.
My friends do not know which one is me.
I don’t even know my real friends.
I’m a shadow of everything abnormal.
Broken mirrors often remain broken forever.
Stigmatized.
Traumatized.
Swept away.
And should any lucky broken piece be recycled,
it might never be mirror again.
I was born guilty!
Call me a broken mirror.
You can’t mend my broken pieces.
Call me a bullet wound.
My scars, eternal with sore memories.
I am a prisoner of nuptial disaster
born guilty of a failed cosmetic marriage.
They say I’m guilty,
I wasn’t caught in the act,
but born looking guilty.
Mama said she’d have eloped in time.
but then I gatecrashed before she could sign her divorce papers.
Even before they paid her dowry.
She won’t forgive me for ruining her belly.
For engulfing her embryo and refusing to let go.
Even when she said no.
I thought it’d be a triumphant landing
But only the midwives cheered my arrival.
More of a routine ritual than a candid cheerio.
I looked back to whence I’d come,
but I can’t turn the hands of time.
Copyright © Darlington Chukwunyere | Year Posted 2020
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