Mirror

Mirror


I go to her window.

I have seen her on the street,
much later than is proper for a child.
She is lonely.
She plays at imaginary friends
with prowling cats who enjoy a momentary acquaintance,
with solemn structures
of stone and brick sporting colorful postings that promise excitement.
Often she hums bright little tunes;
her body gracefully accentuates.
She is beauty of a fading kind.
Soon she will understand
the world she yearns to find beyond these squalid barriers
cannot be found.
I want to save her that.

I want such a beautiful companion.
She is lonely.
I have become loneliness itself.
This is a different kind of yearning need.

It’s not sex.
I have no such desire.
That possibility was cut out of me so long ago,
never to be known.

It is a need to give, to be part of, to have a reason to respond,
a reason to feel other than bad.
So how can I take her?
How can I offer my suffering, my damnation
as a gift of friendship?

She will grow into a common whore, bitter and sweet,
creature of the street and the night.

Perhaps we’ll find each other there in time,
for the briefest time,
a moment.