As in sleeping-drink spices, I loosen in the liquid-clear  
mirror my fatigued demeanor  
and place the hush of a willow shade inside— 

I, then observe soft drapes of green surrender, 
where sunlight strains  
through trembling leaves, let down my hair 
and drink quietly from the image. 

This is the place where breath slows,  
where the hush is a held note, where we pause  
between the hush  
and the glow, between the knowing and the yet-to-be. 

I step forward, where shadows thin, spill into  
gold-spun air, a lover waits, touching the edges of fading time
and reach 

with an outstretched hand,  
as though to coerce time to stop— 
could it be that ache  
and sorrow are just echoes in the alley of our own making? 

We are the children of clocks—ticking away our future  
in seconds, blind to the centuries in between, 
in the mirror, 
the boundary is never sharp—it softens, 
it bends, 
and I am both here and not, 
caught between the quiet weight of shade 
and the soft embrace of light, 
neither fully gone, 
nor fully here— 
but in the margin, I breathe, and I am enough. 

I step away from the liquid-clear mirror as the sun flickers
its last breath, 

and the evening pulls a veil of stars, perhaps 
life is not about what is saved and  
what is destroyed, 
rather it is defined by the space we fear and yet 
continue living on, by being brave.

 

 

 

Photo credits: Person holding a clear glass bottle by cottonbro studio, Pexels.

Loosely inspired by the opening line of the poem “Lady at a Mirror,” by Rainer Maria Rilke 💜

Posted for Open Link Night #376 (with LIVE Edition) @dVerse Poets Pub