Mirrors

For a long time I didn’t know—

like I had over my eyes a large blindfold,

some cosmic joke I still pay for

—but it turns out I don’t quite fit the mold,

any mold. In some other life the person 

who’d sit where I sit now (they

wouldn’t be me, of course) would have had

yellow hair or black hair, and wildest of all,

they might have been blue-eyed

or maybe green, it hardly matters.

And they’d speak one language. 

And they’d have one home.

And…

they would have been happy,

they would have been similar.

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? That other person,

in walking down streets and seeing other people

would look at them and be seeing in mirrors.

The television, a mirror. Literature, a mirror.

The whole world, a house of mirrors—

reflections I can’t have.

I am my own shape in this universe, anyone else 

like me, like me, scattered dandelion seeds

forced to create our own roots somewhere else.

But that’s alright; I suppose mirrors 

would become tiring after awhile.