(1.)

she asked me
to draw a self portrait

on a plastic sheet on the floor

how fitting
that i should crawl
to meet myself somewhere.

(though i do wonder
how best to depict
the inside of our tears?)

(2.)

every attempt
at this transplant
the canvas rejects

                                   i am a creature
                                        of smudges

my edges:

                       a no man’s land.

i am but
an elephant path
                            to a dead end

(always a dead end.)

(3.)

there

lives last
         but an hour

there
i am but a museum
of crumpled poems

i am but
     the word

                  i

       lost
               and found

       and lost

               again

amid
ephemeral eternities
                   of words.

(i was stolen from my own body as a child.

– And how do you deal with that?

First, you try to inhabit others.
But after a while you just make due with being no one.
You become just an absence, a recipient of force.
yes…
i am just a recipient of force.

That is my self portrait.)