Lisa Janice Cohen

Mirror, Mirror

A week before she bleeds, blemishes
adorn her chin, the skin beside her nose
blotchy. A second adolescence, body
tilting toward menopause; hormones

in their final, desperate lurch. The mirror
is not kind. Eyes narrowed in self-loathing
only etch the furrows that line her forehead
deeper, permanent now even when she smiles.

Only the reek of ammonia can camouflage
the gray that streaks through hair
once glossy as a mare's mane. Dark
wires spring from her jaw line, the down

above her lips no longer smooth or blond.
Her body betrays her; each morning joints
sing an aria of petty complaints; knees,
knuckle bones, neck. She needs coffee

to shake her mind awake, oatmeal
for cholesterol and regularity, iron, zoloft,
omega threes, singulair with an orange juice
chaser. By touch, she catalogs

battle scars: the thin necklace beaded
across her throat, a patch of numbness
beside her right knee, the ankle opened
once and once again, the smile stretched

along her pubic bone. All earned, all survived.
Each a reminder she chooses not to wish away.
 

Repeating the MRI

My brain bright as a planet, illuminates
the monitor. You measure, categorize,

examine. I pulse; the presence
then absence of sound just magnetic

flux. Artifact. My heart's rhythm synchronizes
to the machine's beat; waves of excitation

and inhibition pound across a cortical shore.
Each time the tide recedes, I have eroded

just a little bit more. You trace the outline
of some jagged coast, the territory familiar.

There are two roads at every juncture. Each
moment a thousand exquisite dichotomies,

each nerve a jewel of two facets, two
states. On. Off. Light. Dark. Choose.