The cracked mirror threw me off balance—

The cracked mirror threw me off balance—

a shard of morning light caught

in the hollow stare of a glass eye.

Cold, dull, resting in my palm

like a stone I can’t forget,

a small weight of absence and something else.

My grandfather’s faded photograph

passed quietly between fingers,

his missing eye a dark circle,

a wound stitched over by time.

I traced the line where flesh meets glass,

smooth and cold as regret,

a blink without a promise,

a half-seen self that trembles

in the fractured light.