Shadows dance in your eyes

dark and sorrowful

as they draw me in slowly-

down,

down-

into their dusk filled portents.

down

past the shed tears

and the broken hearts

through the terrible trials

you've faced all alone

and wrong turns

on well worn paths-

down;

to the small child within

hiding in the comfortable bedsheets

staring at me with fragility,

clutching its lingering dreams to her chest

like a comforting teddy bear,

lost long ago.

Once i knew this face,

these eyes;

every morning  i rubbed the sleep from them

and stared them down smilingly in the mirror.

Now they are a stranger's;

dark, hollow-

hopeless.

When did they change,

and become part of someone I could not recognize?

When did the hopeful child I felt to be

stop dreaming

and give up on her world around her?

How do i find myself now,

in the these mirror-eyes?