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Alexis May 2014
Mirrors

She's always liked mirrors.

Anything with a reflective surface, really. Something she could see herself with. Like the windows in the classroom, so she could turn her head and check if her name tag was slanted during lessons. Or the puddles of rainwater on the damp track, which she would glance at occsionally while running to see if her hair was in a mess. Sometimes, she would even discreetly use the grainy reverse camera on her phone in the bus, in case a pimple had popped up in school.

To her, they were a great friend. One that saved her from potentially embarrassing incidents. One that would point out tiny flaws that needed a bit of correcting. One that showed her best features, like the way her big hazel eyes always sparkled with enthusiasm.

Slowly, the mirror became a servant. A tool to help her see where the eyeliner was going. To make sure there was no lip gloss on her cheeks. A weak nod of confirmation, that she looked like the models in magazines. So close to perfection.

But never perfect.

That's what her mind would repeat to her, over and over again. Just look at the mirror, it would say.

And so the mirror became a weapon of destruction she detested so much. It seemingly taunted her dry and frizzy locks, the excess fat around her waist, the dry flakes of skin on her lips. It was hard to avert her eyes from those tempting reflective surfaces. Even when she smashed her own mirror, not caring about the seven years of bad luck it would bring about, she was still able to see distorted bits of herself through the sharp-edged fragments.

It led her to sleepless nights, scouring the internet for beauty how-tos. It led to the pocket money she saved from skipping lunch, money she would use when sneaking to the shops to buy cheap drugstore mascara. It led to her becoming a follower of society, a follower of the trends, whatever was popular.

She became a mirror.
Not a poem, not at all.

I decided to try writing prose, and it is interesting.

Hope you enjoy :)
Tamera Brown May 2014
People tell me I'm gorgeous but I don't ever believe it

They say I possess so much beauty but ion never see it

It's sad that I can't even see the pigment of my skin

Yes, I gotta admit its painful to not be on the outside...

It's hurts to not be the one looking in,

Instead I'm looking out , out my eyes and into a glass

A glass that says "I look nice",

and a heart that says I'm worthless

Why is it that way ... I'm curious ?
Why is it that you see size three and I see size 11 ..
Why is it that looking at my self is painful...
Draining..
Call me insane but we don't feel the same

Say any compliment or kind gesture

and I will still think differently of myself differently
because no matter how much you tell someone they are beautiful they must feel it themselves
I have always struggled with loving myself. Self Love will be my greatest accomplishment when I achieve it.
Anthony Perry May 2014
Hello mom, I know we haven't talked in a few years because I left without saying goodbye but I've been thinking of you a lot lately, I'm sorry I left in a hurry but I wasn't strong enough to stand there and vent my reasons without telling a lie and  I'm starting to regret it, well I dont know I might be. I saw my reflection in the window of a passing car and it reminded me of when you would make me stay home from school and lock me in the closet filled with mirrors after you would beat me and get too drunk to stand, I remember going to school after a morning when you'd turn up the heat on a faucet and place it over my hand, I used to wait in anticipation for when the skin would boil, bubble, peel, and fall. How could you think I'd forget about it all? Like when it would rain and I'd run outside light as feather, excited to swim in 30° weather when it was really you holding my face in a giant puddle filled with bugs that would slither out from the gutter runoff so can you blame me not being able to keep it together? I grew up with everything except love, every time I tried to chase the idea of it you would wrap plastic around my head but I was so small that I never realized it was just a rubber glove, I remember everything. I tried so hard, I even tried when I saw you crying one night after you got beat by some man I put my hand on your shoulder and said it'll be OK, you screamed then bent my wrist back and threw it in the blades of a moving fan, that's the real reason why I left and ran. I know I missed your funeral but I dont feel bad, I'm sitting in a hospital talking to specialists and they keep saying I just dont remember anything and that's what really makes me sad but its fine because when I get depressed, mad, or want to swallow a fist full of pills I just look at the scars you left on my legs when you pushed me into an oven when I was four. How can they say I dont remember anything when I can recall everything? I dont know but I'm writing this letter so I can clip it to the crime scene video they show me every day of your body parts washing up on shore near the old harbor, but I guess ill probably just forget until I see this note again so I'll have to repeat the same routine forever and force my brain through this mental labor.
This is only a representation of a nightmare I had when I was younger.
Martin Narrod Apr 2014
angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.
Inspired by William Butler Yeats 'Beautiful Lofty Things'
Invocation Apr 2014
I feel as though I've lost my emotions
But gained perspective.

I found new ways to be healthy
I found myself
I have finally attained a grasp on reality
and in the meantime
I haven't changed
I just lost the passionate flair for everything dear
Where is my mind? My mind is rooted firmly to the ground
8-1
Prepping food
2-10
Sleep
11-8
Gaming, starving, bleeding
I revisit my past pains and try them on like scarves in the mirror
Does this still look any good on me now that I've changed?
The cuts have changed
Or maybe I have
The deeper the better
That's why they call me a hipster



I prefer "bohemian"





I can't feel attraction
There goes my heart, falling asleep when I needed it most
Please don't judge me, I wanted to behave
Erin Apr 2013
Late at night when I'm in bed
the hours before flash through my head.
I think of how you cradled me,
so soft, so sweet, so contently.

When I'm with you I can forget
that I obviously have yet
to sprout my wings; a butterfly,
you make me feel too strong to cry.

I feel so special, pretty even,
that it becomes a shock that evening,
when I look into the mirror and find
that all that beauty was in your mind.
April 12, 2013 /itsjusterin
Zainab Attari Apr 2014
Don’t look in the mirror
It lies to your face.
Don’t you cry or shiver
You’re beautiful with grace.

Don’t listen to their taunts
They are no one to judge
Don’t agree to their wants
Let them keep a grudge.

You think you don’t deserve it
But that is where you’re wrong
Beauty lies within, every bit
Be confident, stay strong.

The ones who put you down today
Will suffer tomorrow
You shouldn't care about their say
**** those voices with an arrow.

If they love you, it’s just you
So don’t pretend to be someone
It doesn't matter what you do
Stay by yourself, don’t you run.

This mirror is *****
It will show flaws even if you have none
But you know you’re pretty
So smile brighter than the sun.

-Zainab Attari
Echoes of living
All time inside the present
Complex and simple

Complex and simple
Novelty exponential
As it always is

As it always is
Forever swells in motion
Change is the constant

Change is the constant
Transformation's here and now
I am living death

I am living death
Death is living manifest
Born from the ceasing

Born from the ceasing
Constantly falling into
The grave of presence

The grave of presence
Is the garden evermore
A fullness profound

A fullness profound
More than can ever be known
Felt here through being

Felt here through being
All at once liberated
Freedom this moment

Freedom this moment
My breath invites exchanging
Interdependence

Interdependence
Everything's brought to life
By spirals self spun

By spirals self spun
There is nothing I am not
No one that I am

No one that I am
I am existence alone
I the paradox

I the paradox
A mirror in a mirror
Echoes of living
Every hair defined
Every pore pointed out
The pigmentation- uneven
dotted with freckles of time
Peeling nose
Two tired eyes
A chin as big as sin

and yet

Every hair defined
Every pore pointed out
This is a face that has seen time
roll by gently, like a friend
with her joys and surprises
and stored behind that visage
is a mind that meditates upon these things
unhindered by a mere reflection
that captures only what the eye can behold
and not the stores of imagination
Shared at http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/ where today's prompt is "Mirror, Mirror."
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