Broken Mirror
Written for Zelda’s Inferno writing workshop: the exercise was to pick an object in the room and metaphorically tie it into your life in a poem.
Broken Mirror
I can’t remember when I broke this mirror.
Did the bad luck start three years ago
or is this already the seventh year?
How much more pain and heartache
will I have to slog through like swamp murk
before I finally see the clouds begin to part,
and that bright yellow sunlight
that only shows up after storms
and makes the world glow golden,
the trees sing with yellow green light,
the rainbows arch across the sky.
There’s a dark space between two rainbows
called Alexander’s Band
which my daughter tells me
is a portal to another realm
and you can’t leave
until two more rainbows appear
in that magical mystical place.
But it’s a place of darkness, of mystery
that could be a dark and dreary hell.
Am I trapped there?
In this alternate dimension
where nothing seems quite right.
Where love is always just out of reach,
where life is a dark shadow of its former self,
where dread and anger and hatred rule.
I’m hoping the seven years started
seven years before tomorrow,
or that maybe the end is a week
or even a month away.
I’ll be looking in the sky
for those double rainbows,
hoping this time
there’s a band of light between them
and that I can somehow find a way
to fly.