In the Mirror, She Was Black


Standing in the doorway where she couldn’t see
I watched her making up her face,
Twisting her hair and gesturing crazily.

Pinned to the secret hidden there
Like a spider on its moth, who was it she saw
Twisting her hair and gesturing crazily?

‘Is that really who you wish to be,’ I didn’t ask,
‘Feasting on the man inside you, trapped in glass?’
Standing in the doorway where she couldn’t see

I thought, ‘starved woman, you deceive
Yourself and silence me. Whom do you see
Twisting her hair and gesturing crazily?’

She couldn’t hear past her intensity
At first. Then she turned, face through face emerging
Broke on me like a tortured ocean, surging.
Turning from herself her green eyes took me,
Standing in the doorway where she couldn’t see.

What I recall now is how thin she was,
How loaded with erotic power all her flaws.
She loved her inner darkness carelessly,
Standing in the doorway where she couldn’t see,
Twisting her hair and gesturing crazily.