Unrecognizable

As I look through the glass, I attempt to see the positive
I try to find the good, and I search to be optimistic
I watch that person who has become so familiar to me
It is I that sees that person get ready for a new day every morning.
I listen to their thought when they are the only audible sound
I wipe their tears when they are the only cleansing agent for the soul.
I fix this person's problems when no one else will listen.
I am this person's company when everyone else is too busy.
I know everything there is to know about this person.
Yet as I watch them through this glass, I have come to realize I know nothing

I wonder where the smile this person you to wear daily has gone
I ask myself why their eyes that were once filled with hope now only shines when light reflects off tears
I wonder why this person's heart which used to find the best in all, is now cold
I wonder why the optimism is now pessimism,
Happiness is nonexistent,
Hope is only determination to make it through the day, and
Love is only a four letter word.

I ask why this person who looked forward to the opportunity of self reflection now dreads a lonely room
Why when they watch the sun set, only a wasted day is evident
Why when they see the rising sun, they long for the time it will again set
Why what once brought joy, now provokes memories that brings sadness
Why what made them smile at one time, is now only a figment of the imagination
I wonder why their future is so uncertain
Why their present is so dismal, and why they long to return to the past
I look at this person and see that they hold themselves stagnate, instead of moving forward
They avoid the very things once loved,
This person runs from the things that once ran their world
Why have they lost themselves in the quest to find someone else

I have known this person all my life,
yet a stranger now stands before me
And as this stranger watches me watching her watching me, she flashes me a familiar smile
And although the gesture is involuntarily returned,
My heart is well aware it is not genuine

Everyone else who sees this person sees the familiar
Yet if they only knew what she covers with a smile, with silence, with a shrug, with a song, with a turn
to walk away
If they knew why she had built that wall around her heart, why she places distance between herself
and those she cares about the most
If they knew why she sings, why she writes, why she draws,or even why she paints
If they could only see the person I see in my own reflection,
She would be as unrecognizable to them as she is to me.