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.