What The Mirror Costs
I don’t stay where the glass hangs on the wall.
Learned young to keep moving past
the inventory of what’s there—
the jaw, the eyes, the hairline’s slow retreat,
whatever the total amounts to.
What the mirror costs is what it costs me.
I don’t stay where the glass hangs on the wall.
Learned young to keep moving past
the inventory of what’s there—
the jaw, the eyes, the hairline’s slow retreat,
whatever the total amounts to.
What the mirror costs is what it costs me.
Some men wake and the glass shows a friend.
Some men look in and the reckoning doesn’t end
in okay or fine or even close to right,
for a man my age in that unforgiving light.
Some got the gift, some got what’s left.
What the mirror costs is the test I’ve failed.
Years taught me to carry most of it quietly.
No tears for doors that never opened,
for every version of myself I couldn’t grow into.
Simply because the face in the glass
wasn’t the one that was supposed to be there.
What the mirror costs isn’t easily put down.