There is only one.
It is alone,
Except for infrequent seconds when it shares a moment just behind your eyes.
But it is capricious.
It lingers only long enough to pine for knowing that
“The life you lead is mine.”
It cannot own it, there is nothing to possess.
Just the knowledge that it was there,
In a distant empire clattering with foreign tongues,
For time enough to make the record.
It only leaves a scar.
Like a tattoo blazed across my mind,
Unhealed and bloody;
Infection so unkind.
This strangest mirror,
This shiny dish of self,
Reflects a thought,
Absorbs my mind,
And then stares back into itself.
Like the traveller to that distant land,
Seeing all at once a catalogue to be read and wondered at.
Images vaguely captured,
As a stream unfolds its changing bubbles;
“Was that really me, like an up-turned stone, in that opaline dream?
Did I sparkle for a second and go out,
Like a galaxy that in a moment disappears?”
