gachigon

1:11 This is an exercise in reflection.  What is the page but a mirror?  You read to lose yourself in words.  Yet whilst navigating the white spaces between the black imprints, whilst translating the ink marks into images, you stumble across a you you have forgotten.  Perhaps a you you have abandoned.  Perhaps an ideal you.  Perhaps a monstrous you.  You come across yourself in this thicket of prose unexpectedly, as if by magic.  The author is like a stage magician, s/he pulls back the flimsy curtain (the story, the imagined construct) and with a gleeful cry (

I They stand, abandoned at the gates Each morning, little girls In polished boots and hats; Armour against the warm hide and The fall. Their mothers, Pearl-eyed and pale in the morning sun Do not look back.  They slide Fish-like into their chrome and leather shells, Longing for the understated Click of the car door, the flip of a switch; Family to Freedom. The little girls don’t cry. Like small wives their hearts Are learning to become vast And empty. I see these girls, Mount gently curving backs, curl cold fingers In tangled manes. I see these girls, These perfect sculptures of innocence and ice Begin to melt. II

The frost gathers on the glass between you and I: there is a coldness that echoes around the dusty paths of old conversations

His veins are dim canals that twist, and turn. A labyrinth of blood, a mirrored path, That ushers me toward the silent burn Of sixty candles, glowing in his hearth. He does not see me raise my hand, nor press My sickly fingers to the window pane. He stands, a statue, cold to my distress As shards of glass lodge in my eyes again. And as I, bleeding, turn to make my way Down iron-scented avenues of lies I contemplate the way he'd smile, and say that eager hearts were something to despise. If I were wise, then blinded, I would see like some Greek Hero, in a tragedy.

I come upon this place alone, always Expecting to find footprints in the dust. A fragment of a memory, a lie That nestles in the burned out fire of lust. My key still fits, latch lifts, though I deny I ever heard the slide and click of locks. I slip inside, draw down the silent dusk Against this empty glass, this happy home, this husk.