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unadored Jun 2022
Encased, as an oil painting,
behind a plane of glass.
Years of exposure dulling the canvas,
no funding to restore the brightness
of the subject's lifeless eyes.
They lay dormant, cloudy,
From a lifetime of accumulative debris.
Transferred between people, buildings, countries;
Memories on display for brief intervals,
Then packaged and returned to storage,
As if they were never your own.
People shift, distorted, beyond the coffin of glass.
Their movements hazy,
The shutter speed slow.
Colours muted,
Sounds muffled,
Melting into each other.
An abstract watercolour, waxing and waning.
Low resolution projections on a dimly lit screen -
A theatre seating but one.
catharsis in tying emotions to words.
Psychosa Apr 2022
A glass has come between me and reality.
This glass encapsulates my being.
The longer I remain in the glass,
the hazier my view becomes.
How I long to shatter it.

The glass has held me captive for quite some time,
and I realize I have come to know the glass like no other.
The glass has protected me from the strange outer world.

I have come to long for the glass which holds me.
But when I reach for the glass,
all I feel is bleak
and yet still my hand is left with nothing.

I cannot grasp the glass
because I cannot see the glass itself,
only what it is not.
lua Mar 2022
time slips from my fingers
when i count each passing day
that passes by like passerbys
on a busy street
walking past me, my disillusioned form
an escaped daydream from a chronic sleepwalker
a recurring thought

the clinking of atoms like drinking glasses
the passage of space
things don't make sense nowadays
never really did

i'm just a ghost with no body to call home
translucent and vague
people watching forever
forever a thought bubble in a lonely man's world.
Eve K Mar 2022
It's a tale as old as time,
Like a fine wine that's aged.
Getting more bitter, rather than sweeter.

I look in the mirror. My reflections stares back at me.
The edges blur and fizzle, waiting to reveal, to see.
The face in the mirror resembles my face, only less clear.
Instead she looks at me, eyes wide with fear.
She snarls her nose, growls and hisses.
I look back, in time, she reminisces.
About the days we would share the same face.
About a time, we lived in the same place.

Now she shouts, WHAT DO YOU WANT?
I scream, she continues to haunt.
Why don't you like me? What's so wrong?
YOU ARE WEAK, I SHOULD BE STRONG.

I look away, count to three.
Ground my feet, think of me.
I am not weak.
I look at her again. I am NOT weak,
I say with a look so bleak.
YOU ARE she judges,
JUST LOOK AT YOU, she begrudges.

I bite my nail, look away again.
I try to hide the pain.
The girl in the reflection laughs and chortles
YOOU ARE FEEBLE, just like all mortals.

I AM NOT! I scream. I AM ME AND WHO ARE YOU TO SAY?
THAT I AM JUST SOMEBODIES PRAY?
But look at you, getting defensive against your own reflection
You could say it's merely a deflection,
Of your self worth
You might as well be a still birth.
You bring no value to this world.
She spits the words, lips curled.
I HATE YOU.
I HATE YOU TOO.
OH BOOHOO POOR ME POOR YOU.

I collapse on the floor,
I can't take much more.
What will the next face bring?
I rise from the abyss,
I can barely withstand this.

The next face is kinder.
Another meek body behind her.
Who are you?
I ask askew.
I am you, and you are me.
Let me show you what I can see.
I see a person whose been through a lot.
Every-time they get back up, down they are shot.

I nod cautiously, is this a trick?
Quickly she'll be coming back, I'll be quick.
There's many faces that you can see,
Be it you, us or me.
I understand the torture you hold inside,
Let it go, be free, we want to take your side.
But how? I cry, tears falling of my cheek.
Keep going slowly, week, by week.
I nod slowly, I cry a lot more.
My arms are shaking my throat is sore.
I can't keep fighting, the monster in my mirror.
Every day she keeps coming nearer.

That's okay, you will see.
One of these days you will be me.
And the little girl hiding behind you?
It's another face of you know who.
I shakily nod, and enquire,
Why she's hiding, as if about to transpire.
She's hiding from the face in the mirror.
Just like you, it's becoming clearer.
We don't like what we can see.
I don't like it anymore please believe me.
I know, I know, my reflection says.
But please let it be just a haze.
The girl in the mirror stood before you.
You can choose what she does do.
It's a hard rope to walk, and I walk it well.
I know it's hard, for you to tell,
But you have a choice, a voice, a speech and sound.
It's hard when she's screaming, I feel drowned.
Shush now, it will be alright.
I can't keep fighting this ****** fight.
I feel so tired, exhausted and spent.
I know, I'm sorry but it's time we both went.

I stare at my reflection. She stares back at me.
Eyes brown, hair soft, no expression to see.
She doesn't blink. I don't too.
We are now the only two.
Blankly looking out at me.
Wishing that we both were free.
Who are you? I mouth at her,
She copies me with silence despair.
I don't know and **** my head.
She does too, heavy as lead.
I'm so drained, she echoes my words.
Is she mocking me, like mocking birds.
She scrunches her nose, as do I.
We nod to each other and say good bye.

I avoid the mirror the next day or two.
Hiding from the reflection, keeping out of view.
Katie Feb 2022
The mirror reflects a life eternal,
A thousand scars entirely internal,
Mortal instants of existence persist
In entrapping souls that cannot resist
The pull of the desecrated altar
Upon which the faithful can only falter
And fail to live a life that has an end.
And so they pretend.
They pretend and play at mortality
As if they were more than an abnormality
Of an unending perception of time,
Trapped in a moment, or a rhyme,
They continue to temper their voice,
As if speaking it was ever their choice.
50
CautiousRain Jan 2022
Do you really know me like you say you do?
I don't like existing in memories of others when I cannot remember my own.
You can't possibly remember me.

It makes me so angry when you tell me that,
angry that I can't verify it,
angry that those ideas of me still linger,
angry that my past exists at all.

I want to purge this dissociative self
I used to be from all consciousness,
and it isn't fair that you can still remember her.

I am so mad that you can compare me now to me before
and that you can clearly recollect all the signs.
I am so envious that I couldn't have seen the signs myself when it was happening and that I still can't now.

I envy the way you can tip your sight backward to how I was before and that you can see the progress.
I want to see it too.

I am so angry
and this feeling burns my throat
when you remind me of what you know.
I just regained my ability to feel anger, and it's a doozy, to say the least...
Io Oct 2021
A blur that breathes, growing and abating,
tides of people, entombed in steel,
flowing and fading on riverbeds of tar.
A place of nomads,
all draped in cloth.
A place of symbols,
of concrete and rebar

Sheets of cold, ice grey
Falling spindles, cold rain
A graceful procession
With a bellyful of tears
A dreadful cortège
A heralder of fears

A young forest paved with ancient crushed stones
Nothing left but the inheritance of a thousand unknowns
Nothing left, but old fossilised bones

All that has happened is what I know
And all I know is what will happen.
All that remains is what I know
And all I know is ruin.
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