Face in Your Mirror - Albert Bouchard

My scarred face inside your mirror

Bears no resemblance to the man

Who posed before your needy eyes

When I thought you loved me

I have become an erasure

My freedom held in your rejection

I give you my compassion

And return to my reflection

Then I raise your silver needle

Shifting my visage, folding its layers

Stitching flesh to bone that crumbles

Overlapping discarded pain

Metaphysical incantation

Self-creation with no past

Alchemy of baser matter

Forgetfulness of what I was

We are born for pain like this

It makes a human know his flesh

Behind the self who once loved you

I am an altogether different man

I hide behind the mask I made

And lose myself in your searing stare

Are we ever as we appear

When looking through a lover’s mirror?

Take your tears and numb my flesh

To the pain of re-emerging

Where once I was filled with wanting

Now I crave freedom from yearning

My reflection on the surface

Of this distorted lover’s mirror

Traces the lines of my trembling scalpel