NaPoWriMo 2026, Day 16 prompt: write a poem that describes something that cannot speak. Include what it has taught or told you.

On the Wall

I have seen you hanging around,
always there. My first 40 years you hung there
on Mom’s dining room wall and reflected
all who passed
so many times each day.

Antique photographs display gilded age design
flanked by sconces on grandfather’s wall
a hundred years ago.

Now old and tarnished,
repaired but not the same,
my reflection in you
calls forth ancestry I never knew.

Did they look into you and did you
hold likenesses of my past,
the good days and the bad
as you help us wonder,

How do they see us?

Look both ways because the mirror knows.
It sees the past and the future secrets.
But it stirs the mind to wonder what it saw and when.
Mind the gaps for seven years bad luck.