Self-Portrait with Mirror and Window
by Cass Garison
Snow. An eye in a tree & she
nowhere to be found. She left
when I told her to & I have lost
my animus. Food pyramid: an animal
consumes an animal derives
energy from another. I once saw
in a winter nothing like this
a boy make a lantern of a snake, plastic
knife milk jug I don’t need to describe
the entrails, let’s just say a body
was scattered about. I am now stuck
with what the third mind has decided
on. Once everything moving but now
petals unjostled on the sill, birds unstirring
in the sky. All things so neatly
compartmentalized. A stone here. A stone
there. Stone. Stone. I scamper off to tend a leg
that will not heal while you are distracted
by the stones. I broke the leg on purpose. Wind
is scraping the earth clean and I have left you
repeatedly, am still leaving you. Stone.
I grind my incisors like a mortar grinds
at a pestle. Whistling bird. Whining bird. You
will pick my bones apart if I let you.