The mirror shines an echo of reality
a thousand times blurrier than I see.
The white lies praise closure, toxic autobiography,
as wax eyes glaze over, magnetic abnormality.

Painted mouth, a harsh sculpted shape.
Torn plastic hair, a blocked-off escape.
Between the fluorescence and the silver reply
the fruits of my labour or a sordid
fruit fly?

The scars on my shoulders, the spots on my face;
saturated colours polluting the lace.
Rouge tinted balm, a turned sickly ochre,
My elbows together,
shoulders narrower, triangular figure;
carved by an egoist, all angles and fissures.

The moisturiser refuses to sink into my skin,
a tantaliser of trial, on the surface, a swim.
Impenetrable, inaccessible, my hands rip the surface.
A false doll face with a fast fading purpose.

But I think to myself now,
on these many auburn nights,
a year passed,
How lucky I am to have something
to miss amidst the fleeting
haze of life.

A photo I took three summers
ago; a boat immortalised behind glass.
It had reminded me of the careful details
and perfect colours, delicate strings
strung tall into ropes, pen barrels
into hard iron pipes.
  
The photo I took, buried under years,
a drop colliding with the sea,
indistinguishable.
The image is flooded with the fact
that it was never seen as I had intended.

Three summers ago, I looked at it,
and thought of him.
Though it was never shown,
it sits, buried.
Because, this winter, I look at it and
think of him.

How lucky am I, to have loved and lost?
How lucky I am, to have loved.