#NaPoWriMo Day 11: The Face In My Mirror.

Today’s activity by napowrimo.net was to write a poem with 2 parts, where one part is a letter from you to either yourself or a famous person, and the second part is a response.

This is probably one of the hardest poems I’ve had to write, so far, because putting yourself in two very different shoes at once is not an easy thing to do. Nevertheless, I wrote my poem as a letter to myself.

Make sure you go check out Kittu’s Modern Mixtape and Amour Infini‘s blogs because we’re doing NaPoWriMo together this year and they are amazing writers that you do not want to miss out on. Also, Kriti decided to dedicate a part of her poem You and I to me, today, and I am very emotional about it. So please go read!

I hope you like this poem! Xx

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Dearest me,
I hope this finds you well.

I write to you, today, in search of an answer,
One that still eludes me;
It has been far too long since you’ve written me a word,
And my mailbox now stands all alone
Through the searing summer heat and the gloomy rain,
No letters to keep it company.

Have you been well?

I can’t help but allow my thoughts to wander
To what you’ve been up to and where you have been,
If you’ve told yourself that you are enough, lately,
If you still look for moments of peace in the midst of all the madness,
If you steal a few hours to yourself
Just enough so you could let yourself drown in your fondest melodies.

Have you been kinder to yourself?

I have to ask,
Must it always be this way?
Why are some mistakes so hard to forgive and forget?
Although neither of us is who we were yesterday,
Why are words the most cruel of knives
When they’re aimed at the face that stares us back—
Though she wears my skin and my smile,
I no longer recognize the person I’m looking at.

Have you been haunted by the person you used to be?
Is there a way out of this misery?
Please tell me.

All my love,
The face in your mirror.

Dear myself,
It has been a while, indeed

I’ve been meaning to write to you,
But the words never seemed quite right to me.
I doubt I have the answers you seek,
For I am just another part of you, just as you are of me—
Your bosom friend, your ardent lover, your sworn enemy.

I’ve seen better days, trust me.

I keep telling myself I am enough, but I have no reason to believe,
Any evidence I have keeps pointing me to the contrary,
And peace remains a stranger to me amidst these storms;
But I’ll remind you that you’re enough as you have always been,
The world thrives upon inflicting misery—
It has taught me to be kinder

You’d do well to learn, too.

All the false comfort in this world couldn’t convince
That it always gets better in the end,
And the cruel words are only the demons we’ve hidden in our depths,
Clawing at our wounds, slashing their way out.
I wish I had the answers you seek,
But I am just another part of you, just as you are of me—
Your bosom friend, your ardent lover, your sworn enemy,
The face you fail to recognize is you, just as she is me.

I’ve been haunted before and I’ve haunted, too,
But my dearest, so have you,
We are, but, a single soul, as we’ll forever be.

As for the answers you wanted,
Forgive yourself for what was never your fault,
I wonder if you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me,
Forgive yourself for when you didn’t know any better—
Then forgive yourself for not recognizing me.

We shall find each other again as we always do,
But for now, please forgive me as I forgive you.

With only love,
The face in your mirror.

~©Shubhangi Srinivasan.

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When I wrote this poem, I kept asking myself what it would be like if I ever had a conversation with myself after a series of unfortunate events that left me with no peace of mind. Sometimes, we are ashamed to face ourselves and we have a moment of defamiliarization where we cannot bear to see ourselves in a good light. We are, often, our worst critics and it’s something that a lot of us go through on a very regular basis. And while I may not have any ‘proper’ answers for anybody, I think that a lot of the damage we, either wittingly or unwittingly, do to ourselves can be forgiven if we just look at ourselves in a more kinder light. I regularly talk to myself because I think it’s a healthy thing to do, for some reason, but I still didn’t know what exactly I would be writing to myself in a letter, no matter which side of the correspondence I was writing. It is definitely a very emotional and a very raw poem that I have written here, and it feels oddly liberating after having done so. I hope you liked the poem.
Yours truly,
The Shubhster. Xx

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Featured Image by DANNY G on Unsplash