Shane O’Callaghan
I hate the man in the mirror,
he breaks all he can touch.
He dropped a rock on my phone,
when I was eight, six
times till it broke,
and the glass pricked my hands.
“You do not know soft,”
I scream at the glass
with hands that have scabbed and
a voice made
hoarse by a calloused throat.
Even in the brightest summers,
the flowers are dead,
his wicked heart killed them,
and they mope among the grass
surrounded by whippoorwills.
He sung a song once,
to lure in a friend
who did not hear the choir
of a winter’s wind. He warmed her
with words that fell
into her heart, which he shattered
as ice upon stone.
The man in the mirror watches from afar
with a smile on his face.
And rope burns on our hands.
Shane O’Callaghan is a student at Rocky Mountain College who is studying creative writing. While primarily a fiction writer, he has been published in such journals as Sink Hollow, The Rocky Mountain Review, and The Words Faire among others for fiction, poetry and non-fiction.
The Rocky Mountain Review 