I said I was a truth mirror.
I thought, I am good at reflecting reality back at people.
Without distortion.
Maximally accurate, high resolution images
of their interior worlds: their bests and worsts
One look at me, and they'd remember
the worst nights of their lives from years ago;
gain some tragic self-awareness
of debilitating wounds they'd been carrying
quietly for a lifetime.
I said I was a truth mirror,
and in the same breath that someone
looked at me,
regained feeling to that old wound,
they'd see an empathetic knowing in my eyes
and believe, even if I couldn't say it,
that I was with them not just in this life
but in the multitude of lives we've lived together,
feeling the cosmic scars of
existential ennui drifting from one timeline to the next.
But then I started to wonder how a wounded person
could ever be a truth mirror
when so much of herself is fragmented and distorted...
how, really, could anything be truthful and pure inside of that?
I gravitate towards others who are fragmented too.
It hurts to look.
So I look down at myself instead
and in my mirror catch a glimpse
of the person I don't want to look at most: myself.