Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day,  like a terrible fish.
The ‘woman’ — this other Plath — relies on the mirror. The fact that she cries suggests she is disappointed by the way she looks, and ‘agitation of hands’ suggests the woman breaking the smooth surface of the water to obscure what she sees there. It also reveals she is worried by the changes in her appearance as she grows older. That she ‘comes and goes’ suggests time passing.
Mirror