Demon Diplomatics

A single mirror tells me the headlines
Scribbled out and rewritten with each day
Like flipping through outlets for the morning news
Each with its own shallow grave dug to lay me in
To slumber and await death or rebirth.

A single mirror I cannot dip into it's essence
Like a lakeside reflection, a mud puddle reverie,
Or a still void where there is only me and blackness
With echoes of splashing and vacant whispers isolating my eardrums
While I sink deeper into the watery embrace slipping around me

Diving deep into myself
Where all beginnings lie
Enraptured by the sheer wonder
Of this little world all my own.
Where each voice speaks from a different place
But they are me
And I am them
Even as they bicker like fools
And cry like lost children.
My demons have grudgingly
Joined forces as my sea
Grows tempestuous in itself
And pulls them to the depths.

I know them each by name
And have felt the way
Their velvet voices prickled my skin
And mere fantasies
Came to me as human lovers
And ravaged me as only
Someone wicked as a devil can.

Half divine, half hell bound
The presences lingering in my watery void
A silent roll call to each voice
That called to me as I walked through my valley
Some angels, some tricksters,
Some lovers, some imitators
Some soul mates, but all were mirrors.

I asked for the eyes of God
And I saw myself in the faces
Of many a different walk of life
Knowing the feeling of my heart sinking,
Of the rug being yanked from under me,
Of betrayal by someone deeply loved
Of primal instincts to survive and protect
Of walls built to keep the hurt out but forgot a window to let the light in
Of being backed into a corner
Of the same haphazard choices that went unpunished
Of different hells and different demons all congregating
when they see their sameness
Of love and forgiveness
Of helplessness and empowerment
Of living and suicide
and of living corpses with empty smiles

So yes, my demons and I speak
But they no longer brood in the shadows
Ashamed of their existence
Because without their darkness
I would not know how strong my light could be
Without their counsel and without their stories
I would still be blinded to what my mirror could not see:
A fragmented but worthy existence
Slowly morphing itself into power
The glorious moment when numbness
Gives way to healing
And the owner of each voice within me can sit round table
And show up as the true, fresh beginnings of life
In a body that loves every part of it
And the soul inside
Broken and beautiful
But whole all the same