MIRROR

For The Three Musketeers

I'm looking into a mirror that's not mine. But what I see is not a reflection. I touch the hair and it is mine. The red lips are mine, and so is the small body. I throw myself onto the polar bear skin to feel the geometrical surface of multiplied illusions. Face down. My chest is not flat. Nor is it that of a madonna. I'm 16 again, dreaming of riding white horses and rescuing male damsels in distress. I'm plugged into something that my spinal cord identifies as “it.” “You're perfect,” the mirror says, from an angle that bypasses the law of the excluded middle. I believe it. The middle itself tells me that I should.