Unlucky Roach
Postmortem, №1 (Poetry)
Up until just minutes ago,
I was too great a coward to
envision myself here again.
I used to
wince
before the mirror,
back when I wouldn’t yet dare
call myself a writer.
Foolish boy, I was —
thinking, fearing —
that afront a mirror was
where I’d risk catching
an accidental glimpse
of my reflection.
I know better now.
I now know I can stoop
nose-to-glass
before the brightest mirror,
and see not
the slightest trace of “me”
in the stranger looking back.
Writing — writing earnestly —
might just have become
the path towards reconciling
me with my own reflection.
Of course,
I’ll never know
because I never let
the writing be enough;
I just had to call myself a writer.
And it’s as if,
ever since I did,
I cursed whatever harmony
was to reluctantly unfurl
between us
to start and end
with every first and final
stroke upon a page.
I’ve since discovered
any page replete
with sprawling lanes
of blackened streaks
to be…
as tolerable as any mirror.
But I’ve also since then learned
that the self-acknowledged writer
is he who dooms himself
to know
the terror
of his true reflection:
Not a rendition of his face
according to
a reflectant troupe of photons,
no…
or even those self-deprecating
musings one proudly (yet misleadingly)
learns to call “reflections,”
no…
but rather that —
all that; everything —
bound to become
hopelessly exposed
beneath the
damning,
blinding,
white
irradiant
nothingness
pouring forth
from
the blankness of
an empty page.
I’ve since discovered
every empty page to be a
silent judge,
whose wrath
the forlorn,
wordless writer
lacks the power to contain.
Up until just minutes ago,
I was afraid to learn
that I’m but
an unlucky roach
halfway up an empty wall,
with no where to hide
at the flip of the switch.
And well,
as it turns out…
I am.
And as humiliating as that is…
I’ve yet to sense the crushing weight
of a hefty tome atop me,
or the presence of a vindictive god
hellbent on hurling one in my direction…
so I scurry on —
shamefully,
silently,
but gratefully —
I scurry on,
in search of the nearest slit.
