I walk into the mirror box again and it’s as if my life
really is just an extension of my own metaphors.
I’m caught in the mirror maze, searching for something
in the mirrors at angles, but all I can see is myself,
my sad, stupid self, stretching on and on forever
with the same boring face, the same boring feelings,
again and again until I stop being able to make out the details.
Am I looking back at myself or am I looking forwards to the future?
Will it always be the same or has it merely been
the same since forever? I stare into the mirror tunnel
at all these selves repeating themselves,
forcing the years, the weeks, the days into the same strict patterns,
merely following the self that came before them, merely mirroring
the feelings, only doing it worse and worse with each new rendition.
It’s just me, I think, in the mirror box, caught up in myself
because I am selfish and horrible. I’m selfish and horrible
and I want to turn my back on myself but
how can I possibly do that in the mirror box?
I meet myself over and over, and it’s just me,
in all this vast, repetitive vagueness, just me in
this long stretch of lonely unsettledness that surely doesn’t end.
I want to smash my own face in, so I close my eyes
and try to think, maybe, maybe, maybe, because I don’t
want to be this grey-cloud self forever. I can’t be, and so maybe,
just maybe, somewhere beyond all these selves
there’ll be a day when I’m down on the shore
and the sea will be calm and the sky will be
faded purple. Love will not sink down into nothingness
because in the cool evening air,  my heart will be full
instead of gaping and my mind will be at ease
instead dwelling on it’s own boringness
or entangling itself in own self-created sadness.
And maybe, I’ll have abandoned my book
and its pages will be dry because I won’t have been crying into it.
They’ll be no mirrors, just the ocean,
glinting like an amethyst cluster in the half light
and I’ll rest my head on the shoulder of the girlfriend
I'll meet someday and I’ll smile in this beautiful liminal moment
and nothing will be tainted by the dread of returning home.
We’ll kiss – on the shore – and rewrite it forever and
maybe the stars will fall out of the sky when I shake it and
all my trains will run on time and all the wounds
in the world will heal simultaneously.
It’s a moment surely stolen from someone else’s poetry,
but I’ve got to cling to something to avoid becoming
lost entirely in all this dark, intangible vagueness.
There’s got to be at least one imaginary moment
that isn’t just me, reflected over and over.
There’s got to be one moment that doesn’t stare
back at me from inside the mirror box.

i have so many tabs in the books i read
they are color coded and when you flip open the book
i usually have some sort of comment there
these comments range from witty to cynical to dark to brutally honest
either with myself
or a general statement about the world
no matter what it says
whether silly or serious
those comments are my secrets
the tabbed off sections of my mind that i keep for only myself
the bruises i keep concealed
the words i’m too afraid to speak out loud
secrets between myself
my book
and my future self
who will one day read those tabs
those comments
and think back to the reasons they were left
think about all the obstacles i had overcome
and all words i had once related to
my truest self lies within
the margins of books
highlighted quotes
and color coordinated tabs
that no one knows the meaning of
i am terrified of someone reading those sections
someone picking up any one of my books
and knowing how i really feel on the inside
it would be as if someone had stripped me of my clothes
and left me for judgement
one day
i’ll be able to let someone open my books
to let them observe my truest self
and i hope that person is willing
to show me
their tabs too