When The Mirror Starts A War Poem by Zehra Shamaz

You wake up.
And before your eyes even open,
the war begins.
Mirror, mirror on the wall—
don't tell me the truth,
I already know.
You pick apart your reflection
like you're dissecting a mistake.
The hair's wrong,
the skin's dull,
the smile—
too forced,
too fake,
too everything and nothing all at once.
You scroll through a highlight reel
and call it comparison.
You shrink yourself pixel by pixel
until your worth is measured in likes,
until your voice sounds too soft
to even whisper "I matter."

And at school—
you laugh when they laugh,
nod when they nod,
try so hard to belong
that you forget what your own laughter sounds like.
You wear confidence like a borrowed jacket—
it never quite fits right,
but you hope no one notices.

You call yourself "fine."
You call yourself "tired."
But what you really mean is—
I am tired of pretending I don't care.

Because deep down,
you just want someone to look at you
and see "you."
Not the grades,
not the face,
not the act.
Just you—
the one who stays up rewriting conversations

But listen—
maybe 'good enough'
was never the right goal.
Maybe you were never meant to fit
into boxes built by people
who never learned to love themselves either.
Maybe good enough
isn't something you "become, "
it's something you "already are"
hidden beneath layers of doubt
you were never supposed to wear.

So next time the mirror starts a war,
tell it—
you've had enough battles.
You are the truce,
the peace treaty,
the survivor,
Afterall the poem is still being written.