Poem of the Week

And if you do exist—say it—are you not living

somewhere inside of me at times? Unfurling like fungus,

a lump, a foreign body, cosmic cancer, stardust,

from day to day, from year to year, invading

my territory, seizing land, inciting a coup

one day at dawn in winter. Then you’ll rule

with absolute power inside my body thanks to

advancements in conversion surgery to morph into

your likeness, which means nothing, right? If you exist

you are an enemy within, my own antithesis,

an agent, saboteur, and every night you ingest

another bite of me, am I right? It’s no coincidence

that every morning in the glass I see more traces

of pretense creeping in and diagnose my face

as having someone else’s features, wrinkles, grit,

a foreign sentence added, but not in my own script.