What Does My Reflection Show?

I didn't know what I was looking at in the mirror.

I couldn't tell who was staring back at me.

Was it someone who used to be me?

Here I stood looking down at a child.

Eyes wide with wonder and innocent to her own burning fire,

Yet drowned like Ophelia in misery to love's cruel game.

She had spirit and took the world as her own oyster.

But then treachery plucked the pearl from her oyster,

To make her shameful and ugly for what she was brought up to be.

A woman with a taste for knowledge, adventure, and thirst for freedom

Only to be filled with spite.

And this used to be me?

In the mirror now there is a woman,

But yet there is nothing surrounding her body

No hatred, no shame, no sorrow,

Only the claim to her name.

She stands naked and exposed, waiting to be played

But while she waits for someone, her own mind is crafting a game.

She will no longer be the servant, the slave,

She is her own master and she has her own name.

She stands tall like a sword, glistening with the quest for fame.

It is in this fire that her phoenix is reborn,

Her desire to be the child that takes her hand

And leads her into the lush forests of wonderland.

I see a woman who has gone through much without a dent in her soul.

I see a woman with fortunes yet to be foretold.

Someone who is happy, but yet has the fear of expression.

Soon she will move past it and take it for aggression.

This is the reflection I want to show,

Someone who fell and was able to pick back up,

Those failures and create them anew.

Someone who could be a wonderful as you.

I wish to grow to love myself.

I wish to be beautiful again.

I wish to learn to love everything in my life.

So that one day no one has to tell me how wonderful it was then.