Galaxy Rodriguez, “Black Goo”
Black Mold
The mirror is broken.
Cracks spiral and spider and scramble, outward and into me
I hold my reflection by it’s jagged edges as she distorts and dies
And my hands begin to bleed.
I wipe my blood off and my new self looks into my eyes
All seven of them.
The kaleidoscope twists, and she dies again.
The mirror is not broken.
There are no cracks
I know this, I know I know I know, that the darkness that scrabbles around,
The spores that trace the glass, are only surface deep.
I cannot cut myself on the shards that do not exist,
And yet I shift.
The mirror rolls and swirls and shatters.
The mirror is broken.
I am a reflection of a reflection of a reflection,
The real me is somewhere in the crumbling wallpaper
Or in the green of your fifth self.
If I put my hand through the glass,
Will it crumble, like rotting wood?
Like the blue-black mycotoxin tendrils in its frame.
The mirror is not broken.
My true self cannot be locked away beneath my skin,
Because though the mirror hasn’t heard, the scale says
I’m the least I’ve ever been.
The camera, on the other hand, needs to mind its own business.
It’s hard enough knowing which distortion is true
Without its polite and contradictory lies.
The mirror is broken.
If the me that was is not inside me anymore, was I the one within her?
Am I the reflection, and she the true self?
I may be the light of a dead star,
Blinking up at you though I am seven billion years gone.
There is so little light in this old bathroom,
And what light there is is all hazy yellow green.
The mirror is not broken.
Maybe the mold is inside me,
Filling my lungs and twisting my vision,
Making everything I see a funhouse mirror monster.
The contagion in my home and heart that I can’t cough up.
I scrub the glass and my cracked skin, hoping it will clear,
But the bleach only blurs me into the walls.
The mirror is broken.
It opens a shattered
silver mouth for me to climb inside, and find the original me
From back when I could be the bigger person.
The walls’ve been sick for so long,
I know
If I dig my nails into them I can unearth my golden-blooded bones.
The kaleidoscope twists, and I die again.
