mirrored

Faux Self-Portrait of You

You are a very uneven person.
You, on the other hand, the one with not quite
five fingers, are a very uneven person.
Look me in the eye I say with conviction and say
you are a person of complete unevenness.
I look away to look for the surface of something
whose unevenness is its main attraction.
Very uneven person, I address you haphazardly,
you are a patchy, jerky lurcher.
You are nonuniform. You are subsubsubstantial,
I say to you of the fluctuating essence of uneven-
ness. No, I say, I am not a triangle, I do not
fit in the corner. I am an uneven piece of furn-
iture. There is a sirocco in you today.
You are a difficult table. Anything that rolls
rolls off of you almost immediately.
You're not good for a broken string of beads,
Is this not so I say uneven person that you are.
I look down to watch the beads roll where the floor
leans. An odd lullaby passes through my hair.

BY DARA WEIR