they/them: a poetry anthology

the psychology of a looking glass

yeet i looked in the mirror and got startled because i looked like me

A shock connects our eyes.
Tingles up the optic nerve, finds the cerebellum,
sends a jolt through a new boy face.

This is me. Is not me. The eyes are the same:
worried at by weary fingers with stubby-bitten nails.
Reflective, no; one-way glass. He does not look back.

Sprinkled with acne scars and nail marks and colour;
powder paints pride upon my, his, visage.
A tongue that twists into two shapes. Glass and not glass.

Quick flick leaps of neurons darting; him
to me to him again. One, not the other. Two together -
we join cerebral cortices, divided.