sentience

 

(image courtesy William Drai)

*

how many years has it been 

since I fell in love with my own reflection

if love was cold and flat as glass?

 

I’ve spent my life staring into mirrors

watching the years swim towards me

like dark & slippery shapes

that hover and expand under thin ice 

 

and even when there is no mirror i feel my eyes on me

when talking on the phone, in the shower, 

driving a car or doing dishes,

i watch myself from the corner, up above and to the right

an out-of-body awareness of what I look like now as I type this

my ghostly gargoyle, my phantom twin, my consciousness

disinterested and vaguely hostile 

an unblinking self-portrait 

framed in gilt.

 

but what if i skipped the shower, got behind the wheel, and drove north

& norther, to where pine trees fur their feet

and rocks jut like liberated vertebrae

and the river slides and sings?

i could drop my clothes and sink under the surface

break the skin and fuse with substance

i could forget myself. i could lose my corners

then pull up out onto a smooth chunk of hot granite

and lay there, like an egg cracked in the fire,

let the dirt work its way into my crannies

until hair is dreadlocked, skin is brown as dirt, hard as rock and as heavy

my hard-boiled thoughts would finally stay in place

if thoughts were hot as blood, solid as stone and as heavy

maybe then i would know how I feel.   

*

*

How are you enjoying your summer?

Tags: Anna Fonte, feelings, nature, poem, poetry, river, self, self-consciousness, sentience, sentient, stone woman