Paint a Mirror
Paint a mirror.
Follow the Categorical imperative:
Act only by that maxim which makes you a law.
First, write a mirror.
Write a question to it.
Write to my husband:
If my face ages,
If my talent fades,
Would you still love me?
Write the answer he gives.
Of course.
Of course.
Write what he loves ——
what love would never change.
Write the one who read books,
Who does not fear the kitchen.
Write why he loves my sudden courage ——
how I put it down
and give it to him.
Write how I hear this.
Write how I go to another room.
Satisfied.
Handle satisfaction carefully.
Remember the promise:
loving you is my instinct,
your instinct lives in me.
Write what I do with that promise:
Placing a mirror between us.
Reflective side facing only me.
Then paint that choice.
Do not soften it.
Paint the years that pass there.
Uncounted.
Paint the seasons as collages.
In the mirror,
two people love each other.
They hold.
They deepen.
I love one of them.
I give roses to the person he loves.
Paint the roses going elsewhere.
Paint what remains:
scent only.
Paint the day I step out of his body.
The garden becomes a child
who forgets to breathe.
Paint honeysuckle covering what is already dead.
Lotus rotting.
Willows broken.
At the bottom of a pit,
I drift in a small boat.
Grass wipes mud from my face.
Paint the wiping.
Paint the splash.
Paint my fourteen.
Glass suddenly covered.
A soccer ball breaks the window.
No intention.
Trajectory aimed at my head,
A meteor splits the earth.
The moon exits my body.
Paint the orbit.
Paint why it never stops.
Paint a fish boiling in water.
Lifted out.
Ripples.
My finger enters the circle.
Texture loosens.
Paint loosening.
Paint hunger.
Not a metaphor.
Economic hunger.
Even during ascent.
Hidden in storms.
Collected under prettier names.
Paint love being divided.
Faceted.
Reflected from mirror to window.
Cut thin with a jam knife.
Even slices.
Paint swallowing.
Paint feeding.
Paint hunger ending tomorrow.
—— though I can not.
Then write what Love is
when nothing left.
A dream that dreams a butterfly
is called
Zhuangzi Dreams that He is a Butterfly.
A string ，broken without cause
is called
The Lute.
Still in the mirror.
Lotus root hands.
Segmented.
Cut.
Returning piece by piece
to something like a garden.
Write that it is still a mirror.
Write that it never turns outward.
