Poem: Mirror

On lines and shadows

Oct 04, 2025

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Who would we all be
if you did not exist?
Would time still whirl
and torment us in its mist?

Before you I strip
all those fake stitched smiles,
so easily shared
that no one ever perceived
I was never there.

Traces of silver, 
wrinkles and light.
Lovely in you it gleams,
this remarkable fleeting grace,
yet no one truly sees
the sorrow on its face.

On a relentless anguish
you hide what I most dread—
the day you fail to capture
the thread of a thought inside my head.

Like a shattered disco ball,
with it’s thousand facets and shards.
Unfamiliar of a stare will remain,
of distorted stories and scars.

Reflecting, disengaged,
an eternal oblivion in time.

Note of the author: This poem explores my deepest fears, hidden behind what I see in the mirror: growing old, watching wrinkles deepen, noticing the first white strands of hair, and facing the loneliness that comes with battling generalized anxiety and the pressure of social performance. But above all, losing my memories. Remembering is precious to me, so I try to preserve everything in personal journals and scrapbooks, physical photographs, and thousands of digital archives. My greatest fear is sharing the same fate as my maternal grandmother, facing dementia and Alzheimer’s.

So I put it all on paper, as I do with nearly everything, hoping that one day, fifty years from now, I’ll be able to read it with a sharp, active, and healthy mind.