Your True Face

It comes to you
slowly, and not early;
years go by and the mirror
shows it to you only from a distance,
as if you were in the air above a flood, 
watching thick dark water 
rise above levees to fill
once-safe streets, overwhelm
homes, flow into unprotected spaces.

Then one day you’ll see it
looking back at you.
All the debris will have risen to the surface,
random scraps gathered together
in one place at last, swirling slowly
in the glass.

You’ll ask yourself
what it means, how it is possible
that the mess staring out at you
is you at last; 

but you’ll recognize yourself
regardless, and have to decide
at that moment how comfortable
you will remain with it

because it will never be anything else
again except
a pool full of wreckage 
that once were stored away
which now are visible to you,
no matter how much you wish
they were not.