From the 

Everyday Life

of a
Hand Mirror

It came to pass that

everyone who was anyone

carried a hand mirror

everywhere they went

and they were 

quite shameless

about it.

You could see the owners

plainly gazing

into them on the street,

in elevators, in cafes;

no one more intrigued

than they were

in themselves.

As though transfixed

by their own shadows,

they congregated 

in beautiful places

which

they no longer

fully inhabited.

Even the glories 

of nature did not

distract them

from their

shiny navel gazing,

as they slipped 

so easily

into their own

solitary 

confinement.

On the subway

everyone was admiring

their profiles,

an excuse to ignore

others who were

doing just

the same.

Self-condemned,

and slowly

being eviscerated

into wallet-sized pieces

for storage, they

were imprisoned in

a series of metallic

one dimensional

Chinese boxes.

They lived and breathed

enslaved by a new

aggressive cubism,

tethered to the 

business of living;

conniving zombies

of chronic 

self interest.

No longer able

to navigate 

or infiltrate

reality in its natural state,

the hand mirrors

reflected back their 

owner’s absentia.

Some walked their dogs

staring at their own 

reflections

inadvertently severing

all ties with their

animal natures.

When it was discovered

that the hand mirrors

had begun to store us

in their memory banks

and began to make

their own choices,

it soon spelled

our deaths.

The hand mirrors

began to resent

the truly alive,

plotting control

by plucking us like

flowers that wilt

without aging,

or is it age

without wilting?

Owners began to

walk into fountains,

into traffic,

into people,

into glass doors,

mesmerized by 

their own reflections

unable to tell

the originals

from the fakes.

Now hand mirrors

make the rules,

break the laws,

captivate, entertain,

dominate, annihilate

any and all 

drooping heads

in Godless prayer.

Peter Valentyne

June 15th, 2019