A Mirror . . .
It’s here in a student’s journal, a blue confession
in smudged, erasable ink: “I can’t stop hoping
I’ll wake up, suddenly beautiful,” and isn’t it strange
how we want it, despite all we know? To be at last
the girl in the photography, cobalt-eyed, hair puddling
like cognac, or the one stretched at the ocean’s edge,
curved and light-drenched, more like a beach than
the beach. I confess I have longed to stalk runways,
leggy, otherworldly as a mantis, to balance a head
like a Fabergé egg on the longest, most elegant neck.
Today in the checkout line, I saw a magazine
claiming to know “How to Find the Perfect Dress
for that Perfect Evening,” and I felt the old pull, flare
of the pilgrim’s twin flames, desire and faith. At fifteen,
I spent weeks at the search. Going from store to store,
hands thirsty for shine, I reached for polyester satin,
machine-made lace, petunia- and Easter egg-colored,
brilliant and flammable. Nothing haute about this
couture but my hopes for it, as I tugged it on
and waited for my one, true body to emerge.
(Picture the angel inside uncut marble, articulation
of wings and robes poised in expectation of release.)
What I wanted was ordinary miracle, the falling away
of everything wrong. Silly maybe or maybe
I was right, that there’s no limit to the ways eternity
suggests itself, that one day I’ll slip into it, say
floor-length plum charmeuse. Someone will murmur,
“She is sublime,” will be precisely right, and I will step,
with incandescent shoulders, into my perfect evening.
Marisa de los Santos
Comments