It’s funny, really.
Every scent, every drop, every particle.
Every warm cheek. Every spot of
Fluid emerging from the skin and from beneath.
It’s a trivial thing, really.
Hair in knots, pacing down the stairs
On legs that submit and buckle and
You’ve lived this delusion so long
You have nearly been convinced.
Step into the bathroom mirror
To be the self you loathe
And strip of a small section
Of your ragged dirty clothes
And slink beneath the metal cloud
Willfully pouring hot hot rain
Upon your tightening scalp
Your head is a crown.
You need no other.
And you gasp and grasp at your
Reflection in the glass outside
Hands firmly planted on
The simulated windowsill
Of a domestic funhouse
And you meticulously count the
Sins you’ve committed
And atone for each one
Row by row
For so long now.
The dirt beneath your nails has
Become bright and iridescent
Bundle up your hair
Keep your hands away
Almost convinced you are
If you can turn back time,
Look unto yourself,
Laugh about yourself,
There will be another moment when
Perhaps, maybe, you can do none of this,
And some warm wave will carry you
To that specious fiction called home,
And you will believe you know you are known by none-
Look again, dry your eyes, clear your vision
See what you did not before
Live again, unprecedentedly.
You needn’t know.
You are human.