Even in the mirror

Sunday, May 22, 2016

I fold it under

Where I can’t see it

Even in a mirror,

That other self

I sometimes feel ashamed about

The obnoxious character I abhor

When I bother to think of him at all.

We live our lives with both good and bad
then pretend one of them does not exist,

The bad side up gives the perception of strength,

The good always seemingly the weakest,

Until we look too closely, and reverse it

So we do not have to see the bad at all,

Not even in the mirror.

We dress it us it phony clothes, cross-dressing it,

As if a character in some play that isn’t quite real,

Knowing the whole time just how real it really is,

And how impossible it is for us to keep it hid,

How it always takes us over, flipping good to bad,

At a time in our lives when bad looks particularly unattractive,

And how it refuses to keep hid, but always shows

From beneath the thin veneer of good we totally believe

Ourselves to be,

Even in the mirror.