for Susan

painful mirror

your body

is my departure

i watch you dance

as light

pours into a glass

flawless as glass

terrible mirror

woman of light

this body

dances

our departure

that even now departs

as brightness from the glass

a shadow dance

across the mirror

of your body

fractile as light

and turning in the light

that already departs

your body

a thin glass

mirrors

the dance

of shadows dancing

with light

falling in mirrors

of arrival and departure

on the glass

wall of our bodies

this body

dancing

fractures as glass

filled with too much light

i watch your departure

in the mirror

a body of light

in this departing dance

as the mirror turns clear glass

—Maxima Kahn, first published in Rattlesnake Review