See, that’s the thing you’re not getting, the part
about the gods, or whatever you want
to call what happens in the world…or doesn’t
…or not as you had hoped
—that if my wish
for more direct or full attention, like
a shout against all odds reaching the stage,
is heard, I’ll be wishing just as plainly
through the wreckage that it hadn’t been:
a mirror, safe enough at a distance,
has drawn you close—to tweeze, maybe, to pick
at some less than radiant patch of skin
—and you find yourself, later, unable
to pull away. Looking not at your face
anymore, but through to what, earlier,
you must have missed: like a burst of starlings,
the shape they make against an open sky:
regret, fierce and no longer contained by
some previously agreed-upon boundary.
For them, it’s like a game—I’ll look away
if you do, you tell them,
you tell them back.
2025