Mirrors: A Poem

“Forget him” was the most useless advice anyone ever gave me.
“Forget about him,” my friends said. “You deserve better, anyway.”
Forget him. The thought had occurred to me one night years before, but it meant nothing to my hoofbeat heart, stampeding in my chest, meant nothing to my butterfly eyes, wings beating open every five minutes as I slept.
Forget him.
My mother said the same thing on the phone the first time I broke up with a boyfriend in college.
“Forget him,” she said. “If he doesn’t recognize how special you are, he’s not worth your time.”
I didn’t understand.

I wonder where anyone ever got the idea that we are anything but mirrors.
Polaroids that capture wavelengths of spirit
After all, I’d have never seen a rainbow if not for clouds crying, cracking rays of sunlight into technicolor halos in the sky.
I’d never have seen the moon
Without the sun’s reflection to crown her every night.

(I am your ocean
You are my moon.
In the undulations of my body
You crystallize and bloom.)

Forget him? 
We are all refractions of each other
Prisms triangulated for a multitude of color
“Forget him” means nothing to my autumnal palms
“Forget him” means nothing to my bellows lungs
“Forget him” means nothing to the billowing sea,
When told
To forget
Her moon.

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Artist: Jim Hughes, Installation Series: “Give More Than You Take”