Did a mirror ever break in your house?
Not a crack across the glass
but an explosion,
like truth refusing to stay framed.

Shards everywhere.
In the hallway,
inside your mother’s eyes,
between the words your father didn't say.

One piece landed in your chest
you didn’t cry,
you didn’t even flinch.
It just sat there,
gleaming.

You bled the kind of red
only silence knows.

And still,
you stood in front of mirrors,
waiting to see someone
you recognized.
But mirrors don’t lie
they just show what’s been hiding
too long.

So you smile,
and they smile back,
but their eyes always know
what yours can’t explain.

Have you ever been pierced
by your reflection?
Felt it numb your senses,
one truth at a time?

Have you stood in rooms
filled with voices,
yet felt like wallpaper
seen, but only when peeling?

You tried to speak once,
but your voice came out
like fogged glass
blurry, unreadable, forgettable.

Even silence mocked you,
echoing louder than the thoughts
you tried to hush at night.

There were days
when the mirror became a clock
counting moments
you couldn’t rewind.

You watched the light
leave your own eyes slowly,
like a star blinking out
in an unnoticed corner of the sky.

You dressed your wounds
with poetry and playlists,
stitched up your ribs
with books and long showers.

You called it healing
but it was survival,
and those two aren’t the same.

You begged your reflection
to lie just once,
to show you someone stronger,
someone whole.

But it kept showing you
the child behind the curtain,
waiting for a cue
that never came.

And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe healing
doesn’t need to be pretty
just honest.

You carry the pieces quietly now.
Not fixed just rearranged.
Because broken glass still shines
if you catch it in the right light.

And you?
You’re learning to glow anyway,
even with cuts on your palms
and glass in your chest.

You’re not just a reflection
you’re the frame too.
The wall that held it.
The hands that swept it up.
The breath that still fogs the new one.

.    .    .