Sylvia Plath

Mirror

abstraction of a poem

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart.
It flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and become a woman