two mirrors

(Fear of oneself: Sharon Olds tribute competition)  
    
It was as if he was scared that the sky-blue    
anger in his eyes would become dull    
if I became a better person. When he died    
I tore through; sauntered creepily; shamelessly    
removed all the drawers, emptied all pockets,    
shook all bags, opened all the books for clues    
to know why, whenever we had talked,      
we were in two different rooms.      
     
We had a couple of large mirrors    
in the house, angelically bordered with rust,    
book-ending his artwork; half for me,    
half for the world. They hung on a stone façade    
he had installed over a cave-like space behind.      
It was there with an unsettling callousness      
that I threw down the gay porn and condoms.    
 
I always knew all things were hidden; as a young boy      
I would flit by his bedside while he slept borrowing    
his girly mags not remembering their order      
when replaced. At night while I slept, the door      
would slam open; a neck-hold and a storm rage    
of ‘Keep Away’ would lullaby-me chaotically    
through the night.
It never stopped me though,    
for that I felt weirdly a little his pride. I shake when I write that.    
     
I placed no thought on neither ritual      
nor disillusion as I threw the tapes into black bags,      
atop his unpaid bills, under dried paint brushes.      
I did not know in what coffin I could bury this emotion.      
For his sunrise and dusk split him. His eastern shine built libraries;      
his sinking west destroyed them. Now there are only two things    
I unearth: for when he never left my gaze      
on the hospital bed; his blue eyes dulled      
     
and when we arrived home,    
it was him,    
that suddenly burst out of the field,      
weightless, winged and whole to explore the sky.    
     
#SharonOlds