If I Were a Poet

Let he who can remember
cast the first stone at the mirror.
I look into his eyes; he looks back into my soul.
I ask his name; he answers
with a syllable unpronounceable and dangerous.

In a diary hidden under the bed,
I discover twenty years recorded by my own hand:
Pages filled with days, days filled with
meaningless and trivial concerns.
The walls have pictures,
pictures of people, people I do not know
and who do not know me.

The room contracts like a womb,
birthing me out. Trailing blood,
I run up the stairs and
collapse at the feet
of a woman who has been awakened
from a troubled dream.
Finding the hallway empty, she says to herself,
“I thought I heard someone crying,
but I guess it was just the wind.”