I look upon the mirror at a person void.
The blanks where the eyes should be,
a flutter of curtains for eyelids,
like bound to the bed in a dark room
where a graveyard of little hates
lingers where love is supposed to.

The stench is strangely sweet,
of sugared cake and candies,
but the decay of garbage forms
a cavern in my brain
composed completely of scent.
The way a deer sniffs and twitches,

scents the lion and flees. But this
is a vacant room, population one,
there is no animal here but me.
The hard edge of the room’s table
dents two holes in my snout,
like a caricature of myself

drawn in crayon, hard as
all workers’ tools. Such as the night
he took me, the worn edges of bedpost,
the way I was crushed and stuffed into the
lip of a Coke bottle. To be stowed for another’s
purpose, whatever it may be.

I look up at the four walls, at the dirty mirror
and its whispering disciples;
their murmuring fish mouths hidden behind cupped palms,
as if the sharing of secrets is a holy offering
of plain wafers and wine for blood. But then,

a vacant room: population zero. Where
the holy take cover before all illness,
stow away their thick money jackets,
and head on home.