Thursday, February 27, 2025

The Undone Thing

 













My body's naked decay
illuminates a room of mirrors,

themselves reflections, years
compressed into a backward look.

That was flat bone, that, my eye,
that, hard skin, sharp spine.

As number shapes itself,
we all gradually freeze

into the markless prism
of each day: One. Attention!

Two. Prayer! Three. Reach out!
Thus, the count approximates me.

The caliper and the scale 
exact a shade of difference

between mole and melanoma-
sensations bought and sold:

a faceless, Ernstian torso,
odalisque sans ottoman,

I beckon like blue oblivion.
Afloat in a dusty tearpool

with feathers, stone, and pigment
peeled from unsized canvas,

mine is the life of reclining truth,
with plump breasts pointing up.

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