Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “mirrors” by Sana Huang, winner of the 2023 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, junior category, and part of our 2024 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection!

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mirrors

by Sana Huang

What am I but scraps of paper taped together?

you write your morals and traditions in scrawling cursive,

grandiose and compelling, yet delicate as a feather

Your heart, the bite out of a soft, bruised peach those wine-

stained lips boasting of glorious victories,

in a practised smirk that hides the sour tang of each

Your past, a gradient of greys and purples

forbidden memories churning in a non-stop cycle,

channelled into anxious words for which you drown me in piles

Your papers, jaundiced and faded with time

crowded with ink characters of curses and cries,

permanent scars left in the place of her crimes

What are you but jagged shards of glass pieced together?

you pray for our reflection to not be reminiscent of the other

but you forget-

Our truth lies in the depths of the mirror.

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Sana Huang is the winner of the 2023 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize in the junior category. “I find that I write my best poems when I’m hit with random bursts of inspiration during unearthly hours of the night. Besides poetry, you can find me dancing or catching up on much needed sleep!”

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