Mirror Image Poem by David Lewis Paget

The mirror was there when we moved in,
Full length, and stood in the hall,
Right where the lounge room opened up
Against the opposite wall.
Yvette was startled at first, she said,
‘That mirror gave me a fright,
To see a figure suddenly there
Stare back in the dead of night.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it there, Yvette,
There’s nowhere else it can go,
Once you have moved your chattels in
And filled up the house below.’
‘It’s strange though, isn’t it, ’ said Yvette,
‘It reflects the wrong way round,
My right is left and my left is right
Like an opposite me it’s found.’

‘You’d better tell her you’re not impressed,
That she’s taken half your face,
And moved it to the opposite side
In a sign of twisted grace.’
For Yvette had one green eye, the right,
And a pale blue eye, the left,
So what stared back from that mirror there
Was a back to front Yvette.

She’d stand in front of that mirror there
And would pose, and raise her hand,
‘I raise my right, and it seems to me
I’m reversed in mirror land.’
I said, ‘It’s the same for everyone
But you seem to be obsessed, ’
‘It isn’t me, ’ said Yvette, ‘you’ll see
When she steps out through the glass.’

I woke at night, in the early light
And Yvette was not in bed,
I found her down by the mirror there
Where the morning light was shed.
I crept up slowly behind her there
And saw what Yvette could see,
That figure, facing away from her,
But never a sign of me.

‘I told the woman to turn around
And she did, I see my back! ’
But so did I, it was such a shock
Like a brought-on heart attack,
Yvette went missing the following day
Though I searched both high and low,
But didn’t stare at the mirror there
Just in case she was… you know!

I called her name when the evening came
And she crawled right into bed,
‘You scared me out of my mind, ’ I cried,
‘But I don’t know why, ’ she said.
She gave me a long, fulfilling kiss
When I stared, as one bereft,
For this Yvette had a blue eye, right
And a green one on the left.

3 August 2015