Mimesis
I didn't know precision,
or the grace curves demanded,
or what steadiness should feel like
when I'd apply my mother's lipstick,
then her rouge, mascara,
then the eye liner that veered
inside the pink limbo of my eyelids,
stung, seared, singed beyond
any one synonym, but not strong enough
to not grab the pencil in the bag,
shade in each eyebrow, and,
like my mother, whose attempt
at symmetry was at best halfhearted,
leave my first take as is: thick,
uneven, as clumpy as birthday cake
left unguarded, and as comfortable,
in retrospect, as when I once wore
my girlfriend's dress, squeezed
into its silky fabric, and swayed,
the closer I shuffled to the mirror,
in such a way that made me move
beyond parody, enter, if only briefly,
a state where I studied my chest,
shoulders, clavicles, and where
I imagined myself as not myself,
but as an image I didn’t know,
a figure unearthing a flesh
shaped by another world.