The Mirror in Her Eyes

I knew her first beneath the dying leaves,

When autumn’s breath had painted trees in rust.

She moved as though the wind obeyed her steps,

With eyes that knew both sorrow and delight.

She spoke of things no ordinary soul

Could craft from thought, and yet I dared believe

That such a fire was born for warmth alone.

The fault, if fault there be, was mine to make

For what is love if not a crafted dream?

I gave her grace she had not earned nor sought,

And dressed her soul in virtues not her own.

My hope, a fragile glass upon a shelf,

Refused to fall though tremors rocked its base.

She smiled, and with that smile I gave her all.

We walked through cities gilded in despair,

And kissed beneath the lanterns of regret.

She spoke of art, and death, and cruel desire,

Of empires raised on ashes of the weak.

Yet when she laughed, the world grew strangely still—

A silence born of something just beyond

The reach of understanding, deep and vast.

I asked her once what love had meant to her.

She paused, and let the candle’s shadow stretch.

“Love is a song the dying seldom hear,”

She said, then turned and left me in the smoke.

I laughed as if I understood the jest,

But silence choked the corners of my room.

I should have known the rot within the rose.

She loved the mirrors more than any man.

She’d preen and pose with cold magnificence,

A queen enthroned in realms of her conceit.

She’d toss kind words like coins into a crowd

Then watch to see who grovelled most for more.

And I, a fool, would gather every phrase

As though they fell from heaven’s whispered lips.

She feigned the ache of wounds she never bore,

And claimed to bleed from scars that were not hers.

With practiced voice she summoned false regrets,

Then danced upon the backs of those who knelt.

She played the martyr, saint, and siren’s shade—

Whatever mask would draw the deepest thirst.

And all the while, she watched. She always watched.

“My heart is worn,” she’d say, “and full of thorns.”

But never once did I behold her bleed.

She spun her tales like spiders in the dawn,

And fed on those who wandered near her need.

There came a night the stars refused to show.

The wind was still, as though the earth had died.

She turned to me with eyes like winter stone,

And spoke the truth she’d hidden in her laugh.

“I never loved you. Not the way you hoped.

You were a page I scribbled on, then burned.

A portrait sketched in boredom, not in love.”

I did not weep. The tears had dried before.

Somewhere within the empty of her gaze

I saw the shadowed hollows of her soul—

A hunger not for love, but for control.

She needed not a partner but a throne,

And I, in foolish reverence, bowed down.

She was no muse, but tyrant in disguise.

She fed on trust the way a fire feeds air.

She stripped the kindness from the hearts she found

And forged it into weapons for her pride.

The wounded came to drink from her sweet spring,

But found it poisoned, laced with silver lies.

She wore their pain like jewelry on her skin—

A glinting proof of power, cold and vile.

A queen of shards, her crown a ring of bones,

Her throne a pyre made of broken vows,

She ruled not with a sword but with a sigh—

A breath that killed, yet never made a sound.

Still, I recall the softness of her hand,

The way it curled like mist around my wrist.

The memory betrays me now and then,

And tricks my heart to beat when none should come.

I see her in the corners of my thoughts,

And every whisper sounds a bit like her.

What is the cost of love that was not love?

She taught me how the kindest voice can maim,

And how the fairest form can house a void.

She showed me that not every wound will bleed—

Some fester deep, unseen, and years delayed.

I do not curse her now, nor wish her harm.

She is a storm that I have walked beyond.

But still, the thunder echoes in my bones.

If ever one should speak of her with awe,

Let them be warned—she wears the face of light

But casts a shadow deeper than the pit.

Beware the ones who seem too good, too pure—

Their sweetness may be sugar over ash.

She is the saint of ruin, cloaked in silk.

She is the smile that makes the mirror crack.

Now let this be the final gift I give—

The truth she dared not speak, though oft implied:

She was no love, no balm, no sacred flame,

But just the echo where compassion died.