Smoke and Mirrors

This, like so many before it, is the love child of too much time and a big, empty notebook.

It is a strange thing to look in a mirror and not quite recognize the person staring back at you.  Not like you look different than you imagined, but like you have two… two realities of yourself.  There is the one that you show the world.  That person is calm, cool, and collected.  She never gives in to what she knows is foolish impulse, even if impulse is perhaps what is most needed at the time.  She charms all, but lets in few.  She has the innate ability to see past the masks of others, which helps her strengthen her own.  She distracts people with their own problems so as to more effectively make hers invisible.  She would rather die a slow and painful death than break this façade.

            But then, somewhere, there is another person.  She sits placidly behind the mask, telling herself that if anyone else really wanted to see her, they would try harder.  She feels just as much as everyone else, and perhaps more so.  She is warm, and sympathetic, and impulsive.  She is vibrant and loving and couldn’t care less what everyone else thinks.  She is the true life-force for the mask itself.  She whispers all that she wants to say, imagines all that she wants to do, and cries, and laughs… so that the other doesn’t have to. 

            When the eyes look in the mirror, it is the warm, impulsive one who sees, but the cool, collected one who is seen.  They do not know each other.  Why would they?  They have never met. 

 

Author's Note

Rate, review, enjoy. Let me know where you see room for improvement! It's not precisely a poem, but it's closer to that than anything else. It's just me thinking on paper...