I. Gazing 

My looking-glass shows me my face and body and clothes. 

My looking-glass shows me my untidy house. 

My looking-glass shows me other people’s dwellings. 

My looking-glass shows me cats, domestic and exotic. 

My looking-glass shows me rainbow hair, platform heels, and pierced faces. 

My looking-glass shows me lands I will never visit. 

My looking-glass shows me people with remarkable lives. 

I look into it for hours. 

My looking-glass shows me smiling friends. 

My looking-glass shows me the forgotten past. 

My looking-glass shows me six impossible things before breakfast. 

My looking-glass shows me parties (I’m not invited). 

My looking-glass shows me ugliness. 

My looking-glass shows me beauty. 

My looking-glass shows me how I look. 

How do I want to look today? 

II. Curiouser 

Some mythical pied piper 

invented the looking-glass. 

Millions liked it, and followed. 

Who wouldn’t wish to flee the ordinary

and explore strange places? 

The wide world appears 

a bit distorted in reverse. 

Glass bends the light. 

The scenes seem slanted. 

But I can overlook that.

III. Rabbit Hole 

I look into the glass when bored. 

I look into the glass to see what’s going on. 

I look into the glass to discover. 

I look into the glass to remember. 

I look into the glass to forget. 

I look into the glass to see how I measure up. 

Some days I grow smaller; some days I seem too large to fit. 

IV. Reverie 

It is a trance I enter willingly, 

And just like any strange and wondrous dream, 

It is bewildering to wake from it, 

Emerging from a stupor, as from sleep. 

I tell myself I’m not young Harry Potter, 

Transfixed before the Mirror of Erised, 

That I can leave the glass whenever I want. 

And yet, it seems I always look again. 

V. Dimensions 

The other day I heard about a woman 

who smashed her looking-glass to pieces. 

I confess, I questioned her sanity. 

Who would break such a wondrous object? 

Can modern people even survive 

without a looking-glass? 

But then I felt a twinge 

of something like homesickness 

and I set down my looking-glass. 

My sister toddled across the living room

And she climbed into my lap 

With her warm fat limbs and sticky hands 

And she hugged me around my waist 

And told me she loved me.

And it occurred to me

the looking could wait.

By Jen Mierisch

From: United States

Website: https://jenmierisch.com/

Twitter: JenMierisch