The Glass Between Two Worlds
Where dawn and dusk in shadows oft entwine,
An ancient mirror, veiled with threads of death,
Reflects the fleeting gleam of days malign.
Its silvered face, a pool of whispered dreams,
A portal framed by dust and creaking wood,
Holds captive phantoms, murmurs, silent screams—
The haunting of a soul misunderstood.
Within this fragile glass, two worlds collide:
One, present-day, the other lost to past,
Where echoes of a self, by fate denied,
Lie buried deep, enshrouded and aghast.
Here walks the seeker, wrapped in doubt’s embrace,
A figure veiled in undiscovered guise,
With eyes that scan the mirror’s inscrutable face,
Pursuing truths beneath deceptive skies.
The chamber breathes a mist of ages gone,
Where time, a slender thread, may come undone;
And every glance drawn to the glass anon
Reveals the dance of countless selves in one.
He, the seeker, yearns to find the key:
To unbind chords that tie his spirit’s song,
To part the veil that keeps him from the sea
Of knowledge vast and shadows deep and long.
Yet in the mirror’s depths, a double stirs—
A ghostly twin, a bearer of his past,
Whose presence in the silvery surface blurs,
And beckons him to fathom truths unmasked.
“Who are you,” cries the seeker, “that reflects
My likeness true, yet shaded by unknown?
What secrets in your glassy refuge kept,
Lie heavy on this heart that beats alone?”
A silence answers—thick, profound, and dense,
As if the glass itself were pondering,
The weight of years and human consequence,
The tangled roots of self-discovering.
The twin, a shadow cast by fractured time,
Speaks not in words, but in gesture faint—
A sorrow carved in spectral pantomime,
The fervent wish to free the self’s restraint.
The mirror’s sheen, akin to water’s gleam,
Distorts and dances with the candle’s flare.
In that warped realm, identity’s a dream,
Where fragments drift like leaves upon still air.
Between the layers lies a world suspended—
A liminal expanse of dusk and dawn,
Where past and present are not quite upended,
But mingled where the threads of fate are drawn.
“Look deeper still,” the silent twin implores,
“Beneath the surface of this gleaming pane,
To find what lies beyond the mirrored shores—
The hidden self, in freedom or in chain.”
The seeker dips his hand into the glass,
And feels the chill of distant memory,
As swirling visions in their currents pass—
Faces, places, whispers of what might be.
A winding path appears within the frame,
Wrought from the shattered shards of yesteryear,
Each fragment pulsing with a glowing flame,
A beacon in the murk of latent fear.
He steps into the realm the mirror births,
A labyrinth of glass where shadows play,
Where every step unravels twisted earth—
The soil of self where truths and falsehoods sway.
Through corridors adorned with light’s decay,
He meets the echoes of his waking mind;
Each specter wears a mask in strange array,
Yet all are pieces of himself entwined.
A radiant child with laughter clear and bright,
A sombre scholar veiled in twilight’s hue,
A silent soldier, armed for inner fight,
A dreamer lost amongst the fading blue.
They speak no tongue, but in their earnest eyes,
The seeker finds the riddles he must solve;
The dual nature framed in deep disguise,
Where self and shadow eternally revolve.
“Who am I?” he implores into the air—
The timeless question, whispered, never ceased.
Within the mirror’s world, he finds despair,
Yet also hope—a freedom yet released.
A spectral breeze that stirs the crystal dust
Carries with it a song of sweet unrest,
A voice that folds around him like a trust,
And bids his weary spirit now to rest.
Yet rest eludes the chosen wayfarer’s quest,
For knowing self is never fate’s fixed frame.
The glass holds secrets, still unmanifest—
And life, a ceaseless voyage without name.
With trembling hand, he reaches for the edge,
Where reality and dream entwine their seams;
Yet finds that boundaries shift like ocean’s ledge,
And certainty dissolves to shifting gleams.
The mirror’s surface ripples soft and slow,
As if to say, “The truth you seek is near—
But not in form your heart can surely know,
Nor in a voice too mortal to appear.”
He steps back through the orb’s ethereal gate,
Returning to the chamber’s muted light,
Yet now the glass refracts a different state—
Fragmented self recast in softer sight.
Two images that neither blend nor part,
Still poised in symmetry’s delicate dance,
A riddle carved upon his yearning heart:
Identity’s unending, shifting trance.
There, in the quiet hollow of his breast,
Awakens hope, not resolution’s peace;
For knowing not the whole, he finds his rest
In seeking still—that precious sweet caprice.
The mirror, keeper of the restless souls,
Reflects the voyage rather than the goal;
And so the tale of self forever rolls—
An open book with many a whispered scroll.
Thus lingers he beside the ancient glass,
The seeker poised amidst the twilight’s breath,
Between the past that never fully passed,
And future’s dawn still veiled beyond the death.
No final truth, no closure’s calm bestowed—
But endless quest, where mortal questions rise.
And in that ceaseless striving, truth’s bestowed
Upon the yearning heart beneath the skies.
