The Backwards World
For those of us whose rose colored glasses don't quite fit anymore.
Sometimes I visit the other Me
Who lives in the backwards world
On the other side of the mirror
That hangs in my bathroom.
We stare at each other,
We mimic one another.
He smiles, I smile. I frown, he frowns.
So alike. Yet so very different.
His eyes of hazel green, so akin to mine,
Gaze back at me, lined and tired
Far beyond years
I could ever mortally experience.
This is how I first saw through his façade.
For my eyes could never be so ancient,
Nor could my hair, only twenty-six years grown,
Have become so unkempt and silver.
I have not his battle scars, his breaking back,
His weary brow, his aching heart.
I could never be so broken.
We live in different worlds as well,
For in that world all movements oppose my own,
And even time seems as if it could be going against
The laws of nature to which I have grown so accustomed.
And perhaps that is where the concept
Of fairness begins to show,
For his world, like his face to my own,
Is so alike, yet so very different.
For in that other world there is no fear,
No undeserved pain or death,
No longing or unrequited love,
No lost and wandering souls.
I hope I can convince the other Me
To one day switch places, where
I will take his silver hair,
His ancient eyes, his heavy heart,
But I will in turn find solace
In that heaven that escapes me,
Where in that backwards world
So many things make more sense
Than they do in my own.
(2014)
