XXXV. The Customs of It.

There is always something forfeit at the border.

I have learned to grin at the customs officer,

declare nothing,

walk through.

Two versions of me. Me versus me.

I catch you eyeing "me"

& grieve the translation.

They do not know. Of course,

one shakes hands; one answers;

one performs, across the long tedium of an afternoon,

the approximate shape of a person

one only sometimes recognizes

in mirrors,

in the brief unguarded moment before a room full of people

turns,

collectively,

to look.

No one wins a war against their own shadow.

Mine always happens to bait me.

Somewhere a train is moving too fast

to be certain of the face behind the glass.

II.

Call it the one who counts the spoons.

Call it the one who stands in the corridor

rehearsing the names of the dead.

Because a border is not a line but a muscle.

Because the self I offer at the desk is not the self but a document.

She was laminated. She has a photograph

in which she is smiling with the mouth

that is also my mouth

but is not hungry.

III.

And yet there is this room.

The particular quality of light at this desk,

which belongs to no one but the one who sits here.

Which one is real.

The one writing this has ink on her palms & no alibi.

She watches trains from platforms, always on the wrong side of the glass.

She was here before you had a name for her.

She will be here when you have forgotten you were ever in this room.

IV.

The other is already at the door.

She has her good coat on.

She is ready: she has always been ready

and she will cross the threshold into whatever room requires her,

shake whatever hands require shaking,

and she will not know anything of this.

I hold the door for her

with something that is

not quite envy

and not quite grief

and has, as yet, no name.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.