It's never quite right, he said
the way people look
the way the music sounds
the way the words are written.
It's never quite right, he said

all the things we are taught
all the loves we chase,
all the deaths we die
all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all, he said.

don't I know it?
I answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon,
it was night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke
something remained.

I walked down the stairway and into it.