Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact

I have no preconceptions

Whatever I see, I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike

I am not cruel, only truthful –The eye of a little god, four-cornered

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall

It is pink, with speckles

I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart

But it flickers

Faces and darkness separate us over and over

Now I am a lake

A woman bends over me

Searching my reaches for what she really is

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands

I am important to her

She comes and goes

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.