Mirrors

A medieval painter depicted Time as an old woman

Challenging her viewers with her haunted, weary eyes

Time gets the better of you, she seems to say

Just look at my callused hands, my tired limbs

It seems only yesterday that I ran down that pasture in my bare feet

Only yesterday that I hung upside down from the branches

My skirt turned inside out, hanging over my head

That day I knew no one was looking

I scraped the back of my knees while suspended there

And licked the scarlet blood that oozed to the surface from my soft, plump fingers

The next day – today now – the scrapes have healed

But the flesh is weary

It slips from the touch

Like dried, wrinkled peach skin sliding beneath your fingertips

I don’t heal so quickly anymore

Dali depicted Time as melting clocks

Dripping over lifeless tree limbs

In some barren wasteland

The sun doesn’t seem to shine there

Yet there is light

The atmosphere appears dead

Yet I breathe

In truth, Time is nothing more than a human construct

So perhaps I should abandon feeling sorry for my aging self

Perhaps I’ll just step through this mirror, and choose living instead