The Cracked Mirror

This is a poem I wrote sometime back, at a creative writing exercise. Unlike the other stuff I wrote during that course, this poem somehow is poignant to me, besides being one of the shortest poems I've ever written.

To the house’s attic I would climb

Creep in through cobwebs and dust

To the corner where it stood-

A cracked mirror, old and neglected.

Long hours of playtime I have spent

Gazing at myself in the mirror

Reflected in bits and multiples

Counting the dark spots on my face

That age had awarded the mirror

In each of its cracked bits I saw-

Myself, in a different eye

I lived in stories with heroes

from each bit of the cracked mirror-

One sad, one happy, one angry

Yet all was one, all me.

There first I learnt of humans;

how many hid in one.

There I grew up each day,

discovering a new face within me.

Ages have passed since then.

And time, clouded my memories,

like the blurred images in the mirror.

Yet many a night lying awake,

I can see vividly-the cracked mirror

and the many faces it once drew of me.

Were they all me? Or mere flaws of the mirror?