Now that the mirror has broken
into a thousand shards of
your careless secrets and
your constant flow of lies,

you’ve come undone.

And you have nothing,
no one to smile and say they understand
while you hide behind
your nervous laughter and
your constant effort
to make things seem alright.

You’re never broken,
but you make everyone else
fall apart
and fall away from the very things that
keep a family together.

You live only on impressions,
where the world is happy so long
as smiles and laughter echo through
a war-torn household,
because you’d never think that
children could sense the weight of
icy conversation.

You ignore the wordless screams that
are written plainly across the faces of
your empty bed and stony meals
and sudden hiatus from the true laughter
that occasionally finds itself breathing.

You’ve truly come undone,

but you’ll never even notice
the mirror’s broken.