Flash Fiction (Poetry): Echo by Val Muller

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to write a story or poem using the following words or images: memory, mist, moonlight, mosaic, mask.

This week’s poem comes to us from Val Muller, author of the Corgi Capers mystery series. Find out more at www.corgicapers.com.

The poem was inspired by staring at the numbers of the date of this post: 2-20-2020 and the imagery of its repetition.

Echo

By Val Muller

The moonlight wakes me,
It cuts the night,
Corporeal.

What does it want?
What does it know?
How many eons of time in its glow?

I sit up in bed,
Bare feet on carpet,
Toes splayed on the mosaic
Of moonlight through trees.
The room is cold,
But I do not shiver.

I rise, silent. Déjà vu.
I have done this before.
A memory:

Once, at age eight,
I awoke in moonlight.
It called me to the mirror,
And I looked.
Half in dream, I peered and saw myself.
My mind transcended the glass:

Someone peering back at me,
Someone old.
Familiar but foreign,
Comforting but startling,
The eyes were the same:
Sadder, more tired, more intelligent,
But mine.

I saw myself seeing myself,
And I shivered.

Child-thin body staring at womanly curves,
Tangled locks echoing graying ones.
What etched those wrinkles in my face?
What lessons sculpted wisdom in my eyes?

I don’t remember returning to bed,
But I must have.
I awoke the next morning
And I was still a little girl.

Now, the moonlight invites me.
It lights the night,
A friend.

What does it want?
What does it know?
How many eons of time in its glow?

In the mirror, it bathes
My gray locks in misty aura.
My wrinkled brow
Speaks of hardship and victory,
Of disappointment and loss,
Of survival.

The gossamer light cuts through the mask.
I slip behind the glass to find, perplexed,
Entranced, a little girl of eight,
Staring back at me like maybe I’m a mother
Or a savior or a ghost.

Like somehow I have answers.

But instead I bring more questions.
How can I possibly have been that small,
That young, that naïve, that creative?
How could I ever have had that much confidence and energy,
And why on Earth would any of us
Trade it all
For wisdom?

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: https://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/