Ghosts and Broken Mirrors

by Michael Lorilla

Every day I walk past a broken mirror
I can't hide it
I've tried to swallow it
It follows me


Everyone knows it belongs to me
I own it, it is mine
It is all I have left
Yet it there for all the world to see


I see in it's reflections Pictures of a me
I never knew existed
Of a life I never had
That continues to haunt me


Jagged broken bits
Cut off without reason
Like short stories
Without a beginning
Lacking a sense of time and place
People demand
But I don't know what to say


I can only think
Of fragments of quickly fading memories
Of ghosts of butterflies
Of webs of spiders silk
Of ties that bind, yet break, yet remain
Of echoes across two worlds
Drowned by the white noise