Mirror, Mirror – #poetry #self-portrait

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Tell me what you see:
Someone who once knew it all
Once looked a lot like me.

At least she thought she knew it all;
She passed all the exams
But when she had to choose a life 
It all went up in flames.

It’s not easy to live alone;
Nor easy to make friends: 
It’s harder still to live at home
Where childhood never ends.

When love finds you you think you’re safe
You drink the night away
Then wake up with a bitter taste
And still you wonder why?

You drink and can’t control yourself
‘To dream still greater dreams;’
When dreams fail, to console yourself:
How bitter this world seems!

Until one day enough’s enough
Of drinking, popping pills;
You need to redefine your safe
And sober place when all else fails

Mirror mirror who am I?
Now finally I see
So many flaws, but minor things
With sober clarity.

Written for dVerse ‘Come and take a selfie!’ Sarah is hosting, and she has set us the following task:

‘If you were giving me a portrait of someone else, you might pull out one feature, or one incident, or start telling me about their eyebrows and head off somewhere completely different. I’d like a self-portrait that does something like that. By the end of this we might not know what colour your eyes are, but we might know what inspires you, or how you take your coffee.’

I gave up drinking just over a year ago, and I feel I’ve learned a lot about myself since then (not all of it bad!) For instance, I don’t think I would be in the poets’ pub writing poetry right now if I hadn’t gotten sober. This is my share for tonight – now I look forward to learning a bit more about my new-found poet friends 😊