Heed Dorian Gray

Whose face is it she sees — hers or the Other which lurks between?

Of too many mirrors in too many rooms, this one shows decay:

grey skin so thin the remaining muscle and sinew migrate through,

hollows slipping into the abyss pressing in from behind.

Synchronized, their hands slide across the smooth surface,

ignoring edge’s chips which drip, stench growing day by day.

.

Day after day after day, she walks up, up, up to visit the Other;

touching her smooth face as she touches too slick glass,

fingers pressed to where the Other’s teeth should be.

Bit by bit by bit, skin and hair slide off — fat already long dissolved.

Her teeth knock about in her gums, clacking off rhythm,

chattering from the cold the fire could not smoke out.

.

Eyes no longer clouded, the Other stands: still staring, still mute—

Still, still, still — nothing ever kept still anymore, least of all she.

The smell of sick-sweet rot followed her around the house,

settling into wooden floorboards, coating her hair.

She smelled it on her purpling hands so thin, so thin,

skin too thin; tearing at the joints, picking at the seams.

Blue veins spilled to blue stains, inking fragile, dying skin.

.

The mirror, once smooth, dangles with surface corroded,

mottled black and grey just as her skin now remains on remains.

Skin once so silky now papery shrink wrap around still-pink bones.

The beauty, the energy, the worship she fed by feeding the Other—

all gone; from laziness, from hubris, from neglect —

self-ruin, fine print amiss, impatient and haughty and starved.

Only the faint maw of mercurial abyss remains behind mercury sheet.

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