Some literary works do not simply sit on a shelf; they demand your attention, compelling you to confront your own reflection. The debut poetry collection from Mariam Temitope Alayande, titled Only If You Look in the Mirror, is precisely this kind of powerful, introspective work. Released to readers, it functions less like a conventional book and more like a hall of mirrors, each poem offering a different, often fractured, view of the self in states of despair, resilience, and transformation.
A Landscape of Emotional Metamorphosis
Alayande's approach to themes of heartbreak and loss is anything but linear. She masterfully avoids a straightforward narrative of sorrow. Instead, she transforms emotional devastation into a series of vivid, shifting landscapes. In her hands, pain becomes a weather system, a geographical feature, or a piece of mythology. This technique grants the collection a unique, dreamlike quality where suffering is never an endpoint but a passage to something else.
One poem captures the consuming nature of a flawed love with the stark imagery: "He looked at me like I was edible… yet my fingers didn’t fit into his." In another, the experience of abandonment is reimagined as a fantastical rebirth: "He drove her into the ocean of shattered hearts… now she’s a mermaid." These are not quiet elegies but spectacular re-conceptions of personal trauma.
The Volcanic Voice and the Turn to Healing
Where some poets might employ restraint, Alayande embraces a bold, almost volcanic, diction. Her metaphors strive for epic scale, framing internal states as natural disasters, psychic storms, and cosmic events. This stylistic choice places her in conversation with poets like Ada Limón and Sharon Olds, who also build grand, visceral architecture from personal and bodily experience.
A standout piece, "Throwing Tantrums," powerfully articulates cumulative hurt: "Bruising myself with your lies, Bandaging my bruises with your deceit, You took a fine piece of wood and cut and cut and cut and cut into it." However, the collection's true strength lies not in its portrayal of ruin but in its deliberate journey toward reclamation.
The Reclamation of Self
The later sections of the book, including poems grouped under themes like "Love Thyself" and "Another Love," move beyond speaking about empowerment to actively performing it. The poetic voice learns to return to itself, choosing its own body and insisting on its own name. A resonant line declares, "She is one of a kind, one to behold but never to hold," signaling a hard-won independence.
In the closing chapters, the earlier turmoil gives way to a steadier, luminous register. The poet undergoes a spiritual metamorphosis where divine intimacy replaces romantic exhaustion. Symbols are transformed: fire shifts from devastation to purification, water becomes a blessing, and light turns into a safe home.
If there is a minor critique, it is the collection's consistent high volume. The emotional crescendo rarely dips, with every image burning at its brightest. A few quieter moments might have provided deeper contrast and enriched the overall emotional terrain.
Nevertheless, Only If You Look in the Mirror stands as a bold and vulnerable debut from Mariam Temitope Alayande. It serves as a poignant reminder that healing often begins not with forgetting painful experiences, but with the courage to look at them closely, steadily, and without turning away.
