#Poetry ‘Mirror’ by Fiza Pathan

Mirror

by Fiza Pathan

They say that I must look into the mirror and see

How ugly the Lord has made me.

How I’m not as fair as the moon,

Nor as beautiful as a pink rose in bloom.

In the mirror I must gaze and realize,

That the world will only mock and ridicule my puffy face as they generalize;

They will tell me that I’m obese and not meant to be

A lover or even a human being;

And that I’ll be not anything but a failure

To my looking glass dream.

They say that others will come

With their beauty and sculpted figures,

They will take away my pride with one plain snigger;

The dreams I’ve built upon, my existence will be put to shame,

That the mirror on the wall will swallow up my fame.

But a human is not a mirror image

Time has proven that it is so;

There is no truth residing in the mirror

So let not my thoughts over it linger.

Love is faith based on goodness and this is a universal fact,

The mirror can’t open its mouth to deny even that;

The ties that bind one to immortality and success

Is not the cord that hangs up a mirror,

What is usually gold is not what glitters.

A glass so cold cannot tell between the divine and the serpentine,

It is true from here to Palestine;

No mirror can tell the truth, nor can it bear

A single drop of blood which is humanity’s food.

No curtain can hide the love deep within me

Even though my mirror tells the world a falsehood,

I know that a non-living glass cannot define my womanhood;

A mirror can break, crash and fall

And break into several pieces,

It won’t fuse back even if you break into several entreaties.

My lover my friend now don’t reflect me

By the image you see in the mirror,

But by the image you see in my clear black eyes

Which is the mirror with which we see more than beauty;

Not a reflection on a cold transparent glass.