Mates and Mirrors, or, the Story of Two Narcissists

Part 1: Fairy Tales

Can’t tell if I’m inches away from confessing the truth to myself
Or falling into self-delusion
Such a fine line, and I’ve been walking that tightrope for years.

But, you don’t need the truth right now
Can’t you see, I need you, mirror!
You think you muddled me, muddied me, meddled with me?

You think a dirty mirror does that?
But darling I wasn’t ready to see the truth clearly, anyway.
Which of us is?

So clean, your desire
Always for the sanitized
While I like the imperfect, the unpolished
Each a construct in its own way
Magnetic polarities repelling mangnetism
But flip either of us around and we’ll stick
On the other side of this charged realm

Don’t you see
Now, through the looking glass dimly
The hazards of existence?

You think that’ll bring me to my knees?
You think I’ll die the slow stifled death
Of one who is afraid to love fearlessly?

After all, weren’t you a part of my inspired self?
After all, you were my muse all these years.
You were, after all.

And yet, when we speak of the Beloved,
Don’t we speak of all the idealized love we’ve ever felt
And all the idealized love we’ve ever seen embodied in one muse?
And weren’t you always beloved?

But the hazards of idealizing one person invite disaster
This world is filled with imperfect people
Imperfect situations, imperfect solutions
It’s hard for the idealized to survive a collision.
Maybe the problem is not that some are narcissists,
But that some are not.

As the hummingbird’s wings fly in an infinity symbol
So your hands move on a piano
And my keystrokes are my piano
The fluttering page, fluttering time
It darts away as soon as I notice it.

Part 2: Reflections

If you followed the river
You’d never lose your way to the sea
But beneath the river you see
Is another river from which I was expelled

When my soul-half was torn away
The subterranean path I was on
Left on me gasping on a sandy bank
Unable to breathe this air
Out of my own, out of my home
How do I find my way upstream now, Muse?
I was with you but lost my spirit
When my soul-half was torn away

I can’t travel on the surface long
Before it becomes a desert
Tell me what to look for, distant star
Should I search thickets, gates, caves, ocean inlets?

How do I find my way,
Back to my cool lakes and quiet forests,
My world with a world?
Indeed, this parallel world
It’s the only one that matters
Without its waters nourishing my soul,
My blood runs dry
And though it’s of another world
It’s my only home in this world
Until the next one.
My vision, my home within a home.

My mirror, who is
The lover of dusty books, shorelines, wolves
And me.