The Reflection of a Smile

This is a poem I started to write during my Master's degree which takes the form of a sestina: a type of structured poem which has six stanzas of six lines each. The thing that really makes this format interesting is that each stanza uses the same six words to finish the six lines, but with a different order prescribed for each stanza.

I recently dusted off the start I had made and finished it off, more as an exercise in practising new poeting skills than anything else. I don't think it's quite as good as my sonnets, but it was a fun experiment!

Yesterday I caught a glimpse of my reflection.
It was not of me, but of another woman:
A stranger with a secret in her smile.
I turned away, to be confronted with a collage
Of many faces, in mirror after mirror,
Each with an expression too fractured to paint.

“This face could use another coat of paint,”
I said, in a moment of reflection.
I could turn my visage into passion’s mirror,
But, then again, I’m not that sort of woman.
It was enough to frame my thoughts into a collage,
And ponder on the different meanings of a smile.

It is an easy thing to fake a smile;
All you have to do is paint.
Meanwhile, behind it, your emotions are a collage,
Pasted together in a parodic reflection.
I could be any woman,
This stranger in the mirror.

I placed my finger upon the mirror,
At the corner of my silent smile.
I could not recognise this woman,
Face covered in pretty paint,
Staring back from my reflection.
I had lost even the self’s collage.

I tried to piece back that collage,
That fractured face in the mirror,
My pasted-on reflection;
Nailing down the secret in my smile.
I rely, I thought, too much on paint.
Had I become that sort of woman?

What it means to be a woman,
Stuck together in a rough collage,
Is an image difficult to paint
With only help from a mirror
And a secretive smile
Hidden in your reflection.