I look at myself
because it is what you would do, it makes me
feel close to you.
For months only your silence
for company—the lack,
in that way, reliable.
It hovers too long
like a man in the room.
Light from the window slips its flush
fingers under my blouse.
At my hip, gold hairs rise
like good pupils. The mirror bright
and eager as an eye.
I have learned to be
a watched thing
through years
of your gaze, you who claimed
you could stay
hours waiting for the flash
of my skin between
buttons, who took
such clear pleasure in it.
I felt
like a god, or at least a woman
one might love
into suffering.
I fix myself
in that stare. As if I were, as you saw me
once, vital—
a being worthy
of worship, terror.
from Poetry Northwest 12.1 Summer & Fall 2017More by Leila Chatti from the library
Copyright © Leila Chatti
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.