How might one paraphrase Sylvia Plath's poem titled "Mirror"?

s poem titled
is almost a riddle, in which a mirror describes itself, its functions, and its role in the
life of a particular woman.  The title of the poem, of course, immediately announces the object
the poem is describing; a true riddle would have left that identity ambiguous €“ something to be
guessed.

Line 1 refers to the silver backing that makes mirrors reflective.
The mirror is exact in the sense that it provides an accurate, precise reflection. The mirror
has no preconceptions in the sense that it, unlike people, has no prejudices or biases: it
merely reflects, exactly, whatever is put in front of it. The mirror consumes but also
immediately gives back whatever is placed in front of it (2). It never distorts or obscures,
either because of affection or hatred (3). The mirror does not try to hurt; it is simply honest
(4). It resembles God in the sense that it sees and reflects things exactly as they are
(5).

During most of each day, the mirror simply reflects the wall on the
other side of the room (6). That wall is pink, with speckles (7). The mirror has looked at the
wall for such a long time that it feels a kind of affection for (or at least comfortable
familiarity with) the wall (7-8). Yet the wall flickers in the sense that people sometimes
move between the mirror and the wall, and also in the sense that the wall is sometimes hidden in
darkness, when night comes (7-8).

In line 10, the mirror compares itself to a
lake into which a woman looks (10). The woman is trying to peer deeper than a mirror usually
allows one to see; she is trying to search in the mirror to discover some sense of her true
identity:

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, 

Searching my reaches for what she really is. (10-11)

The woman then turns away from the mirror, looking towards more attractive, more
romantic sources of light €“ sources of light that, according to the mirror, are attractive but
deceptive (12). Nevertheless, even while the woman looks away from the mirror, the mirror
accurately shows the womans back (13).

Apparently the woman is emotionally
distraught, perhaps by what she sees €“ that is, herself €“ in the mirror. Even so, the woman
feels drawn to the mirror and finds the mirror significant in her life (15). She comes and
goes in the sense that she probably looks in the mirror, at least briefly, each day.  When the
sun rises in the morning and the woman awakes, she looks in the mirror (16). In the mirror she
sees how much she has changed from the young girl she once was (17), and in the mirror she also
sees intimations of the old woman she is slowly becoming (17). This image of herself as old
woman seems closer and closer each day, like an ugly fish rising toward someone looking into a
lake.