You

I looked in a mirror, and what did I see?

A weary old stranger. “Who are you, you’re not me?!”

I looked once again, expecting to find,

The me I remember; the me in my mind.

The reflection just stared back, tired and worn,

A face shaped by sorrow, sad and forlorn.

“Something is wrong here. This is not right!

This stranger before me has lost all his fight!”

I looked at this stranger, straight in the eye.

“Why have you given up? Again I ask why?”

The bleak eyes looked back, with barely a glimmer.

But deep in the shadows, was that a shimmer?

The tiniest of glows; a spark; a mere ember.

I knew this to be the me I remember.

“If I am you,”. I thought, “You’re not me.

Not the me that I WANT to be!”

I smiled a flat smile, and laughed a bit hollow.

The smile grew, and a real laugh did follow.

“You are me, I am you, we are one and the same.

But if you feel defeated, time to change the game!”

That tiny spark; that ember, it began to glow.

A warm feeling in my belly started to grow.

“Oh mirror stranger, you deceived me well!

But now I have realized that you are naught but a shell!”

The moral of this tale, be it strange but true:

No matter what life throws at you, YOU will always be YOU.