My Portrait Poem by Chima Ononogbu

Whose portrait is in this mirror?
Whose face is this bold as a lion,
Translucent as glassy seawater,
But tethered to fragments of broken dreams?

This portrait looks like the one I know,
The one I have known to be mine.
Though I wonder if it is still mine, or a mask of fine yarns.
Or a blend of a world in shades of superficialities.

Though many dreams I have known and lost,
Though many a time broken in the hands of sorrows,
But this portrait I have always been, even now, even later,
So I nourish it tenderly to make a stronger me.

O in this mirror, my portrait stands,
Soft like it has known winter from birth,
Hard like the sun has been its closest companion.
In its strengths as well as its weaknesses, it is truly mine.

It is all my world the world ever sees and touches;
Pasted along the walls of thoughts and memories.
For many things the world will ever become,
It is all the portrait I will always be in the mirror.