“Mirror, Mirror”

by Adena M’lynn

I found her—

no, them—

at sixty-three.
A lifetime later,
and the mirror finally cracked
wide enough for me to see
what had been hiding in plain sight.

Dissociative Identity Disorder—
they call it a diagnosis,
but to me, it’s a roll call
of every ghost I ever made
to keep myself alive.

Each one wore my face,
but different eyes—
some kind,
some terrified,
some tired of the fight.
And now I stand in the aftermath,
counting the wreckage
of a life I thought was mine alone.

How do you say sorry
for the hurt you never meant,
for the words another voice spoke
through your trembling mouth?
How do you own the pain
when the hand that caused it
was yours—
and not yours?

I see the faces I love—
each one marked
with the fingerprints of confusion,
with the bruises of my becoming.
And I wonder—
did they ever know
how fractured I was?
How every smile I gave
was held together with invisible glue
and shaking prayers?

There is carnage in remembering.
In realizing that survival
was not clean or kind.
That I built a city
on broken foundations—
each alter a street
paved with pain
and paved again with guilt.

I own it, Lord—
every wound I passed on,
every storm I didn’t mean to make.
But owning it
feels like holding a thousand crying children
who all call me “mother.”
And I don’t know which one I am.

Still—
I try.
I gather the shards
of sixty-three years
and lay them on the altar of truth.
Some are bloodied,
some are beautiful.
All are mine now.

And maybe redemption
isn’t forgetting the harm—
maybe it’s standing in the middle of it,
naked with remorse,
and saying,
“I am still here.
And I still want to love better.”

Because this—
this is what it means
to live after the war inside your own skin.
To look at the mirror,
see the carnage,
and whisper—
“I forgive you…
even if you are, me.”