The Mirror

Once more you've degraded yourself on the road. The freeway turned you back in on yourself and you found nothing, not even a good false name. The waitress mocked you and you paid your bill sweating in her glare. You tried to tell her how many lovers you've had. Only a croak came out. Your hand shook when she put hot coins in it. Your face was hot and you ran face down to the car. Miles you hated her. Then you remembered what the doctor said: really a hatred of self. Where in flashes of past, the gravestone you looked for years and never found, was there a dignified time? Only when alone, those solitary times with sky gray as a freeway And now you are alone. The waitress will never see you again. You often pretend you don't remember people you do. You joke back spasms of shame from a night long ago. Splintered glass. Bewildering blue swirl of police. Light in your eyes. Hard questions. Your car is cruising. You cross with ease at 80 the state line and ...

Walls were painted blue so long ago, you think of old sky you thought lovely turned as it did, in your lifetime, dirty. Six crude wood tables and the pregnant cat seem permanent on the pockmarked concrete floor. The owner gives too much away, too much free wine and from his eyes too much grief. His facial lines amplify in light the too small windows and the opaque door glass flatten out. To enter you should be poor by consent. You and the world that hurts you should agree you don't deserve a penny. Nor a clear tongue to beg sympathy from wine dark as your life and rich as your dream you are still nothing in. And you should agree to cross your throat and weep when the casket passes. You should kneel when wind crosses the olive grove in waves of stuttering coin. At nine the light goes down. You weave home to homes you'll never own. Only men in broken rags come back to drink black wine under the painting Moonlight on Sea a drunk thought lovely— turned as it...