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Sprawling, Yes, But Not Forgotten

(after Eliot, out from under)

I have prepared so many faces

I forget which one belonged to joy.

Some I stitched from sitcom cadences,

some were pressed from grayscale saints

who never blushed or broke or told their mothers.

There will be time to unbutton the metaphor—

but not today. Today I pass.

I pass like wind through a hallway

where even the mirrors look away politely.

No, I am not Prince Hamlet—

too many soliloquies, too few exits.

I am the one adjusting the lighting

so no one can see how my vowels linger

on the edges of other names.

Yes, I am “formulated”— pinned, as they said.

Not butterfly, not beetle— but question.

Wings folded up before they could be called flamboyant.

I am not the tragedy, just the body

that carried it quietly through customs.

Even now I hesitate at doorways

long enough to be renamed hesitation.

Still— some days, the fog lifts.

Some days, I walk into a room and forget to shrink.

That’s when the mermaids start to sing.

.