How to Look in the Mirror

1.
i.
Let your mouth be a mouth, dropping open. Let it smile and contort itself.

ii.
The way some people smile makes me believe they are polar bears on melting ice caps and
the rest of them look like a growling monkey, trying to say "I have no weapon," but it is clicking its teeth together instead.

2.
i.
You love her the way she is. If you had her you would never even say "Take your
clothes off". You know she is not beautiful underneath those garments. Her breasts
are drooping. She has a scar on her stomach after having her appendix removed
when she was eight. You would not want to ruin your love for her- beginning and
ending with her, no panties, no skirt, blouse unbuttoned and your penis in her

ii.
mouth. You both leave unsatisfied because you couldn't stop staring at the cigarette
burn on the inside of her left wrist. You know nothing will ever be as good as her with
all of her clothes on, so you don't kiss her and she doesn't take her shirt off and you
don't see the burns on her back or her stretch-marked stomach.

3.
i.
The bedsheets leave deep marks on your skin- tucked around your ankles, pressed
firmly into your left cheek and chin. So that they are still there even after you have taken
a shower and washed your hair throughly- and when you look in the mirror they are

ii.
taunting you or preparing you for hundreds of more nights- for the day you wake up and
you have washed your hair throughly and you try to rub the bedsheet crinkles from the
cracks of your eyes and the skin just below your thighs and realise they are permanent.