Promptly 4

The Mirror Speaks

The Mirror Speaks

My father said I was a reflective personality
and it’s true that I deal in reversed images,
painting portraits for my patrons, personally
persuasive of their particular pulchritudes,
yet secretly negative in my ultimate purpose
and truthful in matters both light and dark,
at times to my own detriment and danger,
the legendary seven years my sole defence
‘gainst disappointed delusion and disgust
in those who ask for news they do not want.

It’s a living in the end, at times a pantomime
of mirth, at others a matter of tragic insight,
a constant narrative of sight and seem,
a fable fast forgotten.


Line count: 14
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 17 2023
Prompt: Mirror.