D. S. Waldman
On Ego
Instead, let the wind take your name
a tress of someone else’s hair
and rush out the dusking window.
Welcome the swollen evening
clouds crawling up the river
the chill that finds you in bed.
Miles into a stolid city
breath muffled between brick and steam
a mirror waits for you to pass,
to look or not look at yourself,
to sharpen or soften your eyes
or to glide past like a shadow.
You’ll find it’s not about the light
but how much it conceals from you
depending on where you stand.
You’ll find a mirror is a choice
a reality to consider
a truth it’s your privilege to ignore.
Did you feel it? — your name
vanishing from the language
exiting through the last wink of sun,
the transfer of enormous weight
from your cracked and crumbling plinth
to the globed shoulders of twilight.
You realize you’ve been drowning
in air, white and odorless
lungs glutted with that familiar silk,
a name you’ve been answering to
quietly panicked, grasping
for the taut rim of your mouth,
a sky livid with purple clouds
humming in and around you --
Do it! Pluck the guitar string
let it overcome your soft skull
the way starlight spreads like oil
across a wrinkled river,
all of your folds and crevasses,
discovering the absences
that disguise themselves as bone,
Chorus of watery moans
stolen into the tissue
of your ravenous longing.
And as the night draws into you
drains you of your resistance
a stranger will present himself,
a shadow in the mirror
born from the delicate light
of an infant constellation.
He will have your square jaw
your broad chest, spacious posture
he will have nothing but time.
Patient and bituminous.
I wonder how long it will take
for your gaze to melt towards him,
for you to raise your hand to his
and see for the very first time
that your bones glow in the dark.
a tress of someone else’s hair
and rush out the dusking window.
Welcome the swollen evening
clouds crawling up the river
the chill that finds you in bed.
Miles into a stolid city
breath muffled between brick and steam
a mirror waits for you to pass,
to look or not look at yourself,
to sharpen or soften your eyes
or to glide past like a shadow.
You’ll find it’s not about the light
but how much it conceals from you
depending on where you stand.
You’ll find a mirror is a choice
a reality to consider
a truth it’s your privilege to ignore.
Did you feel it? — your name
vanishing from the language
exiting through the last wink of sun,
the transfer of enormous weight
from your cracked and crumbling plinth
to the globed shoulders of twilight.
You realize you’ve been drowning
in air, white and odorless
lungs glutted with that familiar silk,
a name you’ve been answering to
quietly panicked, grasping
for the taut rim of your mouth,
a sky livid with purple clouds
humming in and around you --
Do it! Pluck the guitar string
let it overcome your soft skull
the way starlight spreads like oil
across a wrinkled river,
all of your folds and crevasses,
discovering the absences
that disguise themselves as bone,
Chorus of watery moans
stolen into the tissue
of your ravenous longing.
And as the night draws into you
drains you of your resistance
a stranger will present himself,
a shadow in the mirror
born from the delicate light
of an infant constellation.
He will have your square jaw
your broad chest, spacious posture
he will have nothing but time.
Patient and bituminous.
I wonder how long it will take
for your gaze to melt towards him,
for you to raise your hand to his
and see for the very first time
that your bones glow in the dark.
Biography
D.S. Waldman is a writer, painter, and wanderer based in the foothills of the Los Padres National Forest in Ojai, California. Finalist for the 2019 New Writers Story Prize, his work has appeared in the Tulip Tree Review and the Mojave Heart Review. He holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and will be enrolling in the MFA program at San Diego State University this fall.
