The Other Side Of The Lens

If I lent your eyes for a moment
And found my face in unfamiliar atmosphere
My name sounded different in your silence
My shadows had grown little wings
My reflection held a secret
That my mirror had been keeping from me.

A whole world folds into your lens
Tiny strangers crossing the bridges of your attention
A thousand lives passing through two small windows
Between their movements and your gaze
I caught a glimpse of myself.

I wonder what shape I take in your vision
A lighthouse or a shipwreck at dusk?
A house with painted windows
Or a garden blooming with colourful flowers?
Perhaps you see stuff I buried so carefully
Sprouting wild flowers from the cracks in my calm.

How it frightens to become another thing
When held beneath the light of another's understanding
I have worn that distance too
And held the world at the edge of my gaze
I let the lens decide what part of me
Would be seen and what would stay hidden
Behind the glass quietly and unanswered.

But what of you behind those lens
Do your eyes carry ghosts that look like me?
Do I become a colour from your childhood?
A face that resembles something you once lost?
Perhaps everyone we look upon is a window
Through which our own forgotten selves appear

I cannot trust your gaze to tell me everything
For even glass distorts the image it reflects
But I will remember your soulful eyes
How I became both the observer and the observed
How your world briefly rearranged mine
And left me wondering whose reflection I was all along.