Katrina Kaye

The mirror is warped.

It flatters me to the right
and ripples me to the left;
an unreliable narrator telling
the story of the person
I have become.

My eyes are not consistent.
They change color in the light.
They shift an image from a
cloud to a carousel.
They focus on the detail
and miss the larger picture.

How long have I been
mistaking landscapes for self-portraits?
Seeing the line where the shore
ends and not the sea?

It is easy to become lost in the minutiae,
examining each endless detail until
it unravels a new unexplored terrain,
instead of setting sights on the glory
of the whole horizon.

Isn’t there a beauty in a pinch of sand
that the dunes in all their glory cannot match?
A world that cannot be seen without
microscope and closer examination?

What chance does someone like me,
with a distorted reflection and an
unclear vision, have at uncovering
the truth of what is promised?

Is it wrong to want the glory of a speck
and not the entire complexity of the world?

“Mirror” is previously published in “no longer water” (2024).