Hallucinations

Impossible to sketch a mirror

or the sea,

but introspection? Yes, I can see myself

waving from the glassy mirror.

It is the iced froth of my ocean

where iridescent waves of thought travel on steam

trains that race across the depths in a molten blast

of steel swordfish, who would fence on their feet,

if they had any: my mind is as nimble as this

even when a face finds me and stares.

The girl in the mirror observes me silently with

blank eyes that won’t blink, not

when I see the spangled sea-apes dip

their slow hungry arms into her eyes and scoop out

her thoughts as if they are scallops

to be eaten. (By who?) Not when I see those same

apes smack their lips and grin because

her thoughts taste             nice. She will not blink

even as a storm begins to swell, bulging

her eyes like puffer fish. The ocean shivers, contorting

the waves into Charybdis, who swills the waves

of tears as if they were wine and she could

drink and get drunk. I shy away from the girl in

the mirror distorted as waves wash over her and she unfurls

a hand, through the water, through the mirror, reaching, reaching

I blink. And when I open my eyes

the girl in the mirror is gone.