A Stranger in the Mirror

Nearly seventy, the horizon dims steadily,  

where faces blur into solemn evanescence.  

The glass mocks truths I once ignored,  

renders youthful confidence an antique mirage.  

These lines, etched by decades of whispers,  

frame a portrait I struggle to recognize.  

Time’s quiet cartographer surveys the flesh,  

mapping loss with an indifferent precision.  

My laughter, though resolute, sounds foreign now;  

its echoes crawl through unfamiliar corridors.  

The mirror convenes ghosts of unsaid choices,  

offering riddles only regret dares answer.  

Who is this stranger wearing my absence?  

A thief skilled at stealing my certainties.  

Still, some rebellion stirs beneath the surface,  

a heart protesting its gradual unmaking.  

For reflection owns no ultimate dominion—  

it holds me captive, yet I remain more.