Speckled from having witnessed too much,
from being peered into for an answer.

It has gazed unfazed at the same
wallpaper for decades while the joinery
gently changed its mind.

Imagine all the quarrels sweetly dissolved
in the bedrooms of two hundred years ago,
all the lives stretched to brittle resolve.

Imagine the dead babies and the babies
who grew old and died later.

Imagine if I held it up to another mirror
so that it could look into itself and realize

what the dead have stared at down the years.
All it would see is nothing.