There is a woman in the mirror. Supple and comely. Smelling thickly of roses. There is a woman in the mirror. I have never seen her. She is an invader, a fanged, venomous wasp. There is a woman in the mirror with a hateful, pinched face, with a horrible crust around her lips. There is a woman in the mirror, with the eyes of the legs of a spider. There is a woman in the mirror, the age of all my sterile seasons. She arrived early. I wasn't ready. Oh, God, I wasn't ready. I have to set the table, set it now--I am sweating, can't breathe. I am crawling, along the hot sand, along the dry air, I am coughing, the rough scrape of a stubbly chin, the dark stain on a lampshade, the last scream of a light-bulb, the rusted-shears snip of an ankle. My eyelids rot off into the stale white sink. The woman is a whispering reed strained through a rippling cup of water. She is a vast orchard ripped through a meat-grinder. She is a piece of skin left to leather on the clothesline. My lips draw into a full pout and my hips retch, harden, twitch. And the mirror goes soft as candle wax--she slams her angular face through--cracks a China plate over my reaching hands. Her voice multiplies, goldens, deepens. She wants dinner. I unbury the garden. I cut the pink and swollen life in clean, languid strokes, with the river of the stainless steel that I clutch for warmth. I grasp an earthworm between my writhing fingers, I writhe beneath the sizzling stove, the insistence of her stomach sizzles. I wasn't ready. She did not announce her coming. I did not think she would be so ravenous. I have not ungirled yet, I have not unfurled yet, And I love these posing pictures of young men, And I love the way you poise your hand against my jaw, And I love the way you smooth my smile, I love you, down to the teeth Every single calcium cell And she scrapes her fork against the ceramic plate and the meal begins My tarnished silver thighs, my drain-cleaner thoughts, All of it was written somewhere before, in the wrinkle of her cheek, in the knocking at my door--I am the meat-caked beak of a condor, I am a chiasmus, chimera, charisma, and I am the gentle waves of carnelian bay, I am reaching down for a gleaming point of scarlet, I am the cold water on my ankles and a shivering, I am my mother covering my shoulders My mother who sank to her knees and Told me to wear long pants, a one-piece swimsuit, Begged me not to age I wish I had grown cold back then, when my body was still small, (when I was small) Instead of this unforgiving, repulsive warmth that festers in me now. I wish I had lain still beneath the ground Instead of contorting and lying beneath All of these bloodied, phallic, claw(s.)ed bugs Who pat me on the head And give me gangrene, turn me putrid, make me sick. I serve dinner to the woman, now a flurried heap of sweat and thrust. Hand and foot I ask her to become me. Clipped wings and burning knuckles. She serves these men, we all do. She serves these beasts, and I bear her burden. She is happy to press it into my small hands. What did you learn, little girl? Rehearse, rehearse. Die again. Faster now. More moaning. Good. Good. And a stroke of the hair. And a blue in the sky again. And the smoke dances into steam. And a wipe of the mouth. And the shut of the door. And the click of the lock. The lock is Diseased. And my hair is tangled. I scrape the dirt from my lungs. And then I shut the blinds.
