Monster, Monster in the Mirror,
How did you get your hooked claws?
Can broken nails and rosy lips
make both those and your crooked jaws?
How did your jagged fangs achieve
their sneering, snarling, biting gnash--
And your eyes, once wide and fearful,
turn cold and hungry for the catch?

Monster, Monster in the Mirror,
your forked tongue is barb'd and quick,
full of death and lurid poison;
does your poison yet make you sick?
Why do you hunt the ones you love?
How, dear brute, did you get so tall?
Years spent cowering in corners
ought to have rather made you small.

Monster, Monster in the Mirror,
Pity forsook your childlike face.
Did frightened gasping rob your lungs
of each and every breath of Grace?
Through lines of tears and mirror cracks
a soft, gentle figure appears,
--for a moment, as by lightning--
will you consume it with your fears?

Monster, will you at last become
all that you swore you would not be--
and if you do what happens then
to all there is or was of me?