the best way to test whether a mirror is one way glass
is to press your finger to its surface & see if the images connect
revision: the best way to test whether a mirror is one way glass
is to press your mouth to the glass & see if you taste the trapped
on the way your lips kiss back
at night animal eyes are all mirror / all glint / forest become still life
of blink & hunger / become wall of reflections / stars staining tinted glass
near-death is a word bloated with relativity / beached jellyfish splayed open
over dark sand / body fat with light / beauty reduced to mechanism for survival
revision: the night’s eye is bloated with light / splayed over body
interrogate comes from the Latin roots inter [between] + rogare [to speak]
this captures none of the violence of this word
early philosophers believed that all light came from within / human eyes
that vision was simply the reflection / of fire that began within us
reflection comes from the Latin root reflectere [to bend back] / perhaps this word
knew in birth the violence of its name
revision: the reflection speaks / in bending back the light / our mouths
bloated with guilt / this too a reflection / perhaps the dark of the eye
is a confessional
perhaps near-death is a different word in the mouth of the hunter / perhaps guilt
is the same / silence is every species’ first language / a mechanism for survival