For my friend on the occasion of her wedding.
What I know of mirrors
is their imperfection,
their imbalance of mathematics:
one reflects one, & we imagine
this is wholeness & we believe
we know ourselves--
yet you know better,
have known for years
carefully counted, a truth
kept hidden, safe & sacred:
love reflects what mirrors miss,
self known only by being known,
by letting another in to
tell us what they see.
For my friend on the occasion of his wedding. No eye for art, you said, and turned toward Hunger, livid color leaving you cold, neither keen, nor compelling, not enough, not when you already know how
It is not Death that watches us with suspicion, yet you invoke Her name anyway, make of Her a boundary, make of me an earthen intimacy. There is no revelry in roots no matter how deep they run, only f
Even untended, the grass only grows so high. Sunlight shows the gloomy drooping as it is, gilding mournful descent in unmet potential; the moon is more forgiving, coldness holding one moment in place,