Empty Eyes
         by Sarah Elizabeth Hume



  I see my reflection,
  an image of flesh like sunlight resting on calm river 
  water.
  My eyes are empty as they scan the surface of glass,
  searching for every tiny blemish,
  every invisible scar.
  I revel in the task of finding imperfection,
  applying thick layers of powder to hide it.
  And still somehow after such thorough examination
  I overlook what I forage hopelessly for,
  the true essence of self one hopes to find in the years 
  of twenty something.
  It has passed over me like a thin layer of sky in an 
  endless sea of fog.
  It has vanished.

  I am incomplete,
  a puzzle with a single missing piece.
  How can one love what is not fulfilled?
  How can one hold what is not whole?
  I slip through my own grasp like fine grained sand
  without water to press it together.

  I am flesh.
  I am blood.
  I am bone.
  I am composed of the dust I stand upon.
  But who truly am I?
  What binds me to this earth
  with chains of soil and stone and fire?
  And do others wonder so desperately of the cloth they 
  where cut from?

  So I wander.
  Never quite sure of the reason,
  but only that I must.
  And my words stain my hands with tears and ink
  as I gaze once more at the stranger in the glass
  with her sad empty eyes and think,
  "will she ever find the light again?"