Faustine in the Machine

Who's this image you hold onto?

Is she even what she was?

Vibratory imitations' limitations,

the senselessness of touch. 

Oh, there's a hundred conversations

to be overheard each night?

Well there’s a thousand ways to watch her

wear her scarf in dual light.

But these all are only codas

and their rhymes are obvious.

When she's saying "we" right through you,

you insist on hearing "us."

Is your diary a record

or a requiem of sorts,

composed of notes and hopes and half-truths

and misremembered quotes? 

She was watching every sunset

every night from the west cliffs

(or, from beyond the frond where you crouched, 

you hallucinated this).

You can hammer every mirror

till your own hands start to fade --

until the skin is sloughing off them,

till the tides regenerate --

but she'll still be a reflection

of just who you want to see, 

and not who you'll ever be with

or who anyone will be. 

So go down to the swamplands. 

Eat the redead fish until

the radiation sickness cures you, 

if anything ever will. 

Because there's nothing as fulfilling 

as the viewing of the end

when you are certain

it’ll be the beginning again.