The Looking Glass Self
Is shaped by your reflection
Handed back to you
By the angling of the mirror
Held by others
A perspective to shape your identity
Into agreeable comportment
Most days I find
My nature’s appearance
Is pleasant; overall
Interactions positive, smiles genuine
Today though, this dark twin
Does not represent
My normally cheerful mien
Though painful to admit
The ugly optics are accurate
It is a true likeness
Of my callous remarks
And juvenile proclivities
A clear picture is necessary
To corral errant stray hairs
Defying gravity’s zeal
In this way, I am grateful
For your honest verdict
And judicial decree
Contrite, I ask forgiveness
With humble apologies
When grace is to be found
In your serene features
Then too, will mine
Also be blessed
About the Creator
Aspen Marie
In love with life and all of its foibles.
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More stories from Aspen Marie and writers in Poets and other communities.
New Normal
There is always a moment — small, quiet, almost forgettable — when the spark stops being a warning and becomes a state. It never looks like a turning point from the outside. It’s not a dramatic shift. It’s not a cinematic beat. It’s a subtle internal click, a recalibration so slight that only someone who has lived this cycle as many times as I have would recognize it.
By Elisa Wontorcik3 days ago in Poets
Comments (4)
This was brilliant! There will always be the “dark” version of us alive within us; if there was not, we would not be human. I love how you embrace it here with openness and love through both apology and acceptance!
Well-wrought! One of the reasons I appreciate the cynical as opposed to the stoical approach in the old ways is that it does not pretend to be perfect or that perfection is attainable, but this does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from striving toward an ideal, only that we mustn't focus on the results so much as the intent. Should we intend to be happy? Should we intend to be kind? Should we intend to become what we are, as Nietzsche echoes Pindar, and perhaps, without knowing it, Pindar echoes Lao Tsu? What are we then? We are, in the end, that which we intend!
We’ve all had those days where the “dark twin” shows up uninvited—thanks for putting that awkward truth into such poetic shape.💖
Wow wonderful