I’m looking in the mirror at
my crystallised Self,
in moments where I once worried
about which side my hair fell.

I’ve moved, somewhere in the dead of night,
from a timid and passive nod
or empty handshake
to a graceful voice of conviction
of an unknown aptitude.

I speak in drawn-out conversations
with people who are in positions,
but refuse to take one,
who stand and stand stoutly
on no legs at all.

And once shy, once small,
a pleasant round face,
ripe rosy cheeks and pebble eyes,
a doll and a doe
has slipped away in the quiet hours,
in the wandering through the brush,
in the bloody fight with forbidden fruit,
and has emerged less kindly.

I take more to fools than I do frauds.
More to the honest criminal
than the piety of the judge.

There’s as much glory in greed
as there is in suffering.
Of which I have dangled
from the sharp precipice of both,
and landed in neither.

The crystallised self is not unscathed.
It is neither above nor below.
But all.
It is both the fruit
and the one who forbid it.

For all the years I slept on the ranks beneath
with sweaty palms
and the weight of the world
caught in my throat —
oh, watch how this songbird sings.