IN DOUBLE MIRRORS
By Angela Gardner
Published 1 January 2021
In double mirrors
true and false
we are frangible
skin’s visible default
bony anchors
loosening ligaments
the moment of meiosis.
How negligibly begun
but no less purposeful
zygotes, chiasmic.
As slow doors open
uncouple
too milky a creature
and sensation newly
deep or shallow
for an idea of gender
or corpus
of skin’s plasticity
lain apart
from congruence
— thin edge
that clings
ill-fitting.
Wholeness
no less synonym
no less lip-service
against
her bright head.
The difficulty
of true and false
of my your myself
mirror in the skull
finished unfinished.
Who speaks for us
or the quiet we travel.
Voice
interior pervasive
lipped
strange and hoarse
into true and false
flayed almost to
vanishment
— to be paired
mirrored.
Vestigial memory
— shoulders
of clay
or wax and feathers.
Sometimes kn\ife
sometimes wound.
Was I changed
in the night
was I the same
— an inflection
in thin air. Nothing
of the body
but is inexact.
Changeme
In the morning
censure fleshly
gazed upon
in the pull back
lens open
to what is hidden
resisting
comely in response
— exposed
but no less intact.
a tiny golden key
new found
or reconstructed
from pauses
halves in reflection
skinfault begun
will validate touch
uncover grace
leave us
pliable permeable open.