Do you still practice smiling in the mirror You never quite got it right You wrote poems about love, spiderwebs, and your chattering teeth About the endless horizon in someone's eyes And the gravitational pull on your heart You learned you can be replaced while you were staring at your own reflection With each breath, you hoped the mirror would shatter in front of you Sounding like a standing ovation to your best effort Like an epilogue to your act On days like these We can't make a metaphor about your soul and the fragility of glass And I'm truly afraid you know how to use a broken mirror On days like these The courage to write the poem about the days you never lived Can only be found in the hug of a friend you never had We still practice smiling in the mirror Because this is what we do We practice We write poems about death Our friends And our chattering teeth You might say a broken mirror can still reflect Like a metaphor about the resiliency of our existence But we can't make metaphors anymore On days like these We breathe We break And get replaced There isn't anything left to say Just smile and pick up the pieces