Bathroom of Mirrors
Bathroom of Mirrors
Excusing yourself from the game of gin rummy
You’re playing with your grandmother,
You go into the downstairs bathroom, not because
You have to pee (though you do) but because
You love to multiply your single self into selves.
The walls are mirrors, which means that
To walk in is to become legion, your reflections
Like that old graphic of cascading cards
You used to see upon winning computer solitaire,
Only here you’re not alone.
Every gesture you make is silently echoed.
You are lord of all these boys who must obey you,
You, a Napoleon of an infinite and identical army.
But your gestures aren’t mirrored immediately.
You notice that there is a slight delay.
The farthest away especially seem slow to respond,
As if their distance from you has made them disobedient,
Or perhaps their disobedience is the reason for their distance.
They seem to more thickly overlap one another,
As if trying to hide their intentions, like the cards
Your grandmother is waiting for you to return to.
You know that if they were to try to overthrow you,
They would come up against those mirrors that,
Clear as they are, separate them from you,
Serene as the eyes of body guards.
Beyond the last, there are more you’s you will never see,
No matter where you stand or how far you lean,
But it is enough to know that they’re there,
Still loyal to you, like subjects in faraway lands
Belonging to the kingdom, lands you will never visit,
But from which the diamonds in your crown were mined.
You pull your pants down and all the boys do too.
Peer pressure.
Then appear so many golden arches.
What would in an ordinary bathroom seem obscene
Seems somehow heavenly here.
After, you watch pair after pair of hands
Washing themselves equivalently clean.
It’s always difficult to leave this infinite room,
To return to that world where the walls don’t reflect you,
Like being amongst people who don't love you.
Turning off the light is like dousing a fire
Which you've been reading Whitman by
(“I am large, I contain multitudes…”).
To leave is to commit a genocide
The world will never acknowledge,
But it is simple to bring the dead back.
It takes only one body, yours, for all to be resurrected.