Self-Portrait

I see myself in the shadows of a leaf compressed to the green blades growing to a point like the shards of miles of mirrors falling and cracking to perfect gardens. I never inspect the withered assumption of my face’s petty dialogue in raindrops, the deceptive spreading of the words oozing from the skin to the edges of water etched on the ground by gravity and wishing. Passing for the seriousness of my eye, platitudes of my white collar or the perfect posture of my lips, it skirts from the leaves of the plant hiding me and sits stoic like stone in my pupil, mute and unassuming, like Rashi. To gather myself I will swim naked in the wind, bending my blind elbows in circles, stopping now to dance like the cherubic gold on the ark, and gather myself from the particles of this excitement another structure, one closely resembling the beginning.