Meet your own commanding gaze
Acquiescing to the steady-eyed spectre; eyes saying: strip.
Undress slowly in the mirror
Turning
Quiver under the clinical eyes behind the glass
going over every inch of naked hated flesh
every part that destroys you marked
See the look of disgust and impatience
your own
There is a buzzing of flies butting against the mesh
Ragged moths hungry for spectacle
A small light dimming in a small window
Once clean and surgical porcelain whiteness
Darkens and is painted melancholy
Lit only now are the eyes
Stare at them and at you and at everything
A body known but with foreign face
Unfamiliar gazes indiscernible
Window blinds - light patterning you pinstriped
A body of divided black and white
Newborn shadows — groaning, groping — creep to feel You:
Reflection screaming in the black.
WRITTEN BY JOHN SAIGLE
IMAGE BY NOXIFER
