Mirror

I see the stains on my knees from a life of cleaning and scrubbing little faces.  The pants are not in fashion anymore, I am not the same size I was, and my face never gets looked at in the morning mirror, and when I do look I see silver has climbed into my hair and made herself at home.  But you dear say I am lovely and more lovely and altogether lovely, and so I trade my morning mirror for your face.   She tells me I am beautiful and wonderful, and I know she sees the real me, and I am.  My clothing turns to silk and velvet in her eyes, and it is and I am.  I am not busy with drudgery but am twirling through this marriage, and their childhoods and my sweet life because you offered me romance and I said yes, and when it looks like a dirty house and smells bad she says I smell like flowers and I look beautiful and he says I am lovely.  They see that you clothe me in beauty and bejewel my hair with your approval and I say yes to my reflection which today was in a toddler smiling at the new sun through the window and a little girl's morning toe-tapping dance of praise, and you in my hair crowning silver and in my heart saying well done beautiful one, and I say yes, yes, yes!