Metamorphosis

Standing in front of the broken mirror,
I steal gaze through my tiny eyes
as if I have nothing to say to the condition of the old walls.
My feet are heavy with journeys,
looking for myself in the distant cities where nothing goes for nothing.
Wrapped in something I can’t name, like grief, yet to form a whole.
The mirror doesn’t show my face yet 
because you don’t name a king yet, coronated in the village square.
Rather, it reflects the wars I have fought and won.
Things I have shoved down & locked up without telling my lover. 
Prayers that never landed in the appropriate ears.
The priest says: God hears everything.
And I’m becoming too sure God hears me, too.
because I’m fencing a city of my own now—
Something I fear to dare with naked hands.
The moment I swore I’d never visit.
Names I erased with angst & frustration.
From the next door, light comes.
And it dawns on me that even a broken mirror still reflects an image.
until this miracle of physics,
There’s something honest, wounded, but still breathing.
Throw me into the thin air & see my shadow say almost gently:
If you want to know the light, 
You have got to walk through this.
See why I dare everything—
open myself to burn, not to escape.
But to feel almost everything that makes me buoyant. 
This is the only metamorphosis I pass through
 That requires no anatomy classes since every darkness requires light.