By Clara Collins.
Some mornings, I can almost see her
catching in the liquid surface
of a windowpane as if
to fly paper. She is
most nearly visible
when the light is fragile,
its reflection trembling and liable
to scatter. I once took her prisoner
in a dressing room, shut paneled mirrors
around us so we multiplied
infinitely, waiting for her
to flit away
or turn her sideways face, speak
to me, but her gaze was tethered to the distance
and she made no sound, even as I spoke. I found her
in film I didn’t know was taken––the estranged
back-of-the-head, the long nose in silhouette:
this self who doesn’t look
into my eyes, who I can’t know.
She is all the angles others see and pinned
to me like shadow, a tandem ghost. To glimpse her
even briefly, inhabiting my body is the same pleasure
I felt in girlhood, cupping the bright body
of a stunned hummingbird
between my hands––ephemeral
breast a soft whir, intricate, unreachable,
I press my palms to her shard of my world and hold her.
