In the calm of an empty room
I found Pride behind the mirror glass,
and coaxed it into daylight.
I fanned flames from ash
with a slip of red silk,
slashed open white to the skin,
bared like orange pith,
small defense against an outside world.
Like water,
Pride slipped from me at a doorway
and in the mirror
was only sin the colour of shame.
Grey again in the ruins of an inferno,
I told myself
no one was looking at me anyway.
Carol J Forrester 
Words of a true poet!
Thank you very much, not sure I’m quite a true poet but I appreciate the compliment.
“I found Pride behind the mirror glass” – what a great line!
Thank you!
I like the self reflection and the concluding last line gave me pause ~ Good one, including the creative title ~
Thank you Grace.
Beautiful poetry!! 🙂 ❤
Thank you very much.
Amazing how we can rationalize our vices!!
See I’m not sure it’s about rationalising our vices so much as realising that it’s not always vice to want to feel confident in our own bodies. It’s like a lot of things, all in moderation.
Perhaps I misread. I believe you are talking about your own self-confidence and feeling proud of your self! …leaving it all at the door when you leave. Very good!
Nice last line and audio.
Thank you Frank.
Self-reflection and ‘Pride behind the mirror glass’ – a wonderful poem, Carol. The ‘slip of red silk, slashed open white to the skin’ is a strong contrast to ‘Grey again in the ruins of an inferno’.
Thank you Kim. I was trying to find that contrast between feeling amazing in something but then loosing all that confidence like knocking over a glass of water.
I love the last line. A great reminder as we battle with pride.
To be honest that wasn’t what was on my mind when I wrote this. It was more about the fragility of self confidence and the isolation that comes with anxiety and low self esteem. I think I may have missed the mark though.
I like your spoken version and how your pride eluded you like quicksilver or liquid. It’s not so readily captured or tempered. I found the ending to be profoundly sad and can relate, as I wrote about this a bit in my own poem for this prompt. Here we are wrestling with evil or at least with vices, to the point of near death, and no one even cares.
Thank you for your comment. I kind of wanted to flip the idea of pride on its head with this one. I know it’s seen as a sin or a vice but in the other hand self-confidence and self-assurance are a sort of pride as well. Without them we suffer just as much as with too much.
Mirrors in two poems in a row from you. They are both so lovely and rich, and the spoken version is a great gift… so it is wonderful to have confidence, that I believe requires no penance. To lift one up over another is more at the root of sinful pride. The truth for the woman in the poem is that a very important person is looking at her, she herself, and she can love and value that I would hope, but it can be a process. This resonates with me today as I am sitting in my car typing this I am just about to step out for the first time in broad daylight dressed and presenting as a mildly good-looking transgender female, nervous, proud, not confident, perhaps wanting and simultaneously hoping “nobody is looking at me anyway.” Cheers! Thank you, here goes!
Thank you for this lovely comment and I wish you all the best today! I hope you find your confidence along the way and that these first steps are ones of joy.
I felt like I might have missed the mark with this poem but you’ve shown me that I was closer with it than I thought.
That makes me smile
i See God ALL As Human Nature
too now So i Won’t iMaGinE
God
WiLL
Be unHappy
NoW to See Flesh
And Blood Alive uP Close And Very Personal
For Nothingness IS A LoneLiest Place oF aLL..
So.. Whenever i See Feel Sense SPiRiTiNG
Younger Folks TaKinG
Selfies i Say Wow
NoW
finAlly
A Group
of Humans
who are not
afraid oF aLL
That is God as them too now..:)
Lovely reflection of self. Write on, Sister
Thank you very much. 😄
If you’re interested, there’s a poetry link up on one of my Monday posts. It’s based around finding a line from someone else’s work that you love and writing a piece based on that.
Yes! The first line of mine today was a riff on “come into the garden, Maud” 🙂
Well if you’d like to be one of the first people to join the poetry link up here’s the post. I’m thinking about moving it to Wednesday though so next week’s might be late.
https://caroljforrester.com/2018/07/16/poems-of-power-a-poetry-link-up/
Drat. I always thought ‘I don’t like poetry’ – wrong again