Ken Smith, "The Trouble with Mirrors"
Ken Smith
THE TROUBLE WITH MIRRORS
When I must use a mirror, my mother, full of silence resonating, reminds me I am her son, no escape possible.
Her dowry depression, alcoholism, rage, eye and hair colour irrelevant accidents.
"Even roses have thorns" her habitual mantra if she accidently noticed me.
She once smiled, I am not sure why, not at me to whom she never spoke by name, no matter. I read her backwards.
Her face, expressionless, offered no clues.
Her eyes, watery-blue marbles, never blinked Her shoulders, slumped or rigid, calmed or frightened me, but not for long.
Her barely contained fury leaked into teary melancholy.
With no place to hide, in defense, I disappeared irretrievably, a finch, crayon-yellow, dodging a pick-up, only a matter of time. Nuns called me when she died, wrapped tightly in glaring white sheets, her prune face, toothless as usual, blank.
I knew her only in her effect on me.
She refuses to disappear unless, until I allow her to be in death what she was to me in life, nothing, what I see of me whenever I must use a mirror.
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