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.