Close Encounter

for Katy Conrad

What is this in the mirror?
Could this shadow really be
The image of the existential me?
More confusing when clearer
My surprised eyes start to see
Not just themselves reversed but otherwise
This is an epiphany

These eyes of a stranger to whom surprise
Would be as alien as is this face
Of alien familiarity
Familiar once yet unfamiliar now
This face not of what is but what could be
This face of otherwise which wears my eyes
Seeming to bear them more confidently

My conjoined twin separated at birth
When it fell to me to fall to this place
To stumble around without knowing how
To live life first from and then toward the earth
Feeling from and reeling toward fromness of
And towardness of this place where time and space
Move in place here as though from and toward love

The motions of the heartbeat and the breath
I assume now as I assume these eyes
Which comprehend even as they consume
Their parallel existence at a glance
Somehow more like orgasm than like death
And unpresumptuous nonetheless presume
To deconstruct this structure known as Lance

From two sides of the mirror
Face two halves of the whole
As near evolves to nearer
I see into my soul

+Steven Curtis Lance



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