Unlike Narcissus drowning,
As though in a puddle
Of his own courage drought,
Her time she gives away freely.
Like stopping her own gears;
Let it and all her mechanisms
Flow outward.


At night she seeks the glass.
Unspool her hair, she combs
Her musings, the yards she's given
To every inch-worth endeavor.
Generous, her heart and hope spring.
Gray, the world, and short, her time.
And she's never belonged
As truly as she does to her own head.


And in her mirror, there are colors
that dye the glass and allow
the best to shine in,
like stained windows in a church.
Under hers she prays.


Happy you may think the woman
Who sees what she likes under glass.
Would it could be preserved forever.
But who is to bring her flowers?
Who knows what kind to bring?


Which man can give the compliments
she’d most delight to receive?
What rites for each aspect of her visage?
No eyes could flatter like hers.
See in her Goddess Myth any fragility
to stand up to reflect the inner soul.


But you can’t put lungs in the looking glass,
And breathe air into those lungs.
Though she wants to pull
a gender-swapped mirror image
out into the world, her other half
is the man from Backwards Land.
It would have to be the reverse.
Else he'd expect to see his mirror image;
not to be the double of hers.