This Face – A Prose Poem

I no longer recognize the face in the mirror. The stern mouth and steely eyes never bending to

joy or sorrow, love or hate. They are numb. It is the wall that emotions intently hit, and in their

feeble attempt to get in or out, break themselves as bits of glass on the edge that has become this

face; and they shatter into shards of forgotten, unfelt feelings. Hopelessness and hope have no

haven here. They lay collecting dust as they are the broken toys of past memories…images of

joy warped and distorted to reflect a dire time of realization. This face possesses a cryptic kind of

emptiness—a soulless shell of the dead of hell that heaven cannot help. Like a shipwreck at sea,

these grey eyes and sallow cheeks sink into this dark and despairing dwelling which no man can

live but only survive—the spirit long dead but the body alive.