Proem

I became myself.
     I became myself.

No, I always was myself.
     There’s no such person as myself.

I wouldn’t have to turn my eye
     inward, I thought, if I could train my eye

on him—the one I loved
     But I was wrong. My eye loved

everything it fell upon.
     And then one day it fell upon

a mirror. And he was nowhere
     in the mirror. And she was everywhere.

 

From Couplets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023) by Maggie Millner. Used with the permission of the publisher.