Effigy

Staring at the mirror,
I see a slimy something
wearing broken pieces of a rotten ribcage,
calcified skin clinging to the curves and the grooves and the cracks.
Flesh sags off the face
and a foul stench claws its way from bloated pores,
stinking from each crevice
and hanging thickly putrid in the air.

I stare and I cringe, aching to look away,
but my eyes are arrested by a trace of life,
life dancing deep within the face.
Beneath a dull film, the irises glow
like windows to the borrowed glory
granted in my soul by someone else’s death.
A faint reflection glimmers and spreads
within this body that belongs to me,
imprinted with the legacy of the living God.