Once there was a gorgeous girl
named Tina Gorjalina
Crazy for the way she looked
You really should have seen her

Mirrors irresistible
She kissed her own reflection
Pouted out her lips and said,
“What absolute perfection!”

Wished for mirrors, giant ones
on every wall and ceiling
and paths of them beneath her feet,
"My goodness, I'm appealing."

Her bedroom lined with photographs
that weighed down every shelf
None of Mum or Gran or friends
just hundreds of herself

She couldn't bear the other girls
She barked at them like dogs
She said they’d need a handsome prince
to turn them back from frogs

But sometime in her teenage years
with something in her eye
she asked a friend to help her out
That friend just walked on by

And what it was that landed there
infected both eyes now
It grew and spread with rapid speed
but Tina knew not how

The last thing Tina ever saw:
her stunned and staring face
with disappearing, panicked eyes
and mirrors in their place

A sci-fi, mutant, android girl
with chrome, robotic eyes
her two-way, concave corneas
exposed her inner cries

For deep beyond her glitching lids
what everybody knew
Miss Tina Gorjalina
had been blinded by the truth

The world could see inside her soul
But she could not see out
The world could watch her vanity
reduce to deepest doubt

A mixed-up mind, a selfish soul
A darkness dawned within
A fading flash, regrets rehashed
“The girl I could have been.”

So old she grew and lonely too
She never saw again
except black streams of memories
that flickered in her brain

A beauty on the outside still
You really should have seen her
Crazy for the way she looked
Poor Tina Gorjalina

©2009 Mark Bird