My Face in the Mirror (a poem)

My face in the mirror,
sunken and sad, staring back
into eyes that have seen bad
things rise with resolve
from blotches on skin,
crucifixes on fire,
on fire for the Lord,
who came to deserts
with a sword

My face in the mirror,
red blotch on my cheeks,
inside my eyes, a pathway
to my prefrontal cortex
of kaleidoscopic misery,
crosses of fire,
memories from past
lifetimes, rushing back,
entering deserts
with a sword

My face in the mirror,
doesn’t seem like my face
anymore, my life took
a detour back at the fork
in the village road,
I’ve been lost ever since,
ending up in the desert,
a sword in my chest.

(Photo by ali syaaban on Unsplash)

Author’s Note: I used a prompt about mirrors from the Poetry Foundation website as inspiration for this poem. The poem was also partially inspired by “Mirror” by Rita Dove. I decided to use a couple of words from Dove’s poem as prompts, including “mirror,” “blotch,” and “sunken.”