She is a place of pilgrimage,
for washing soles of the
faithful and departed.

She's an aquatic mirror, where
silhouettes are corrugated by
the ripples of repetition.

She is a web of confusion,
waiting for the universal
congregations of curiosity.

She's a stalagmite of creativity,
an iceberg of deception,
an illusion wearing stilts.

She is a tantaliser, an ******,
a bewitcher, who solicits her
suitors by enchantment.

She's a concubine she's a femme
fatale she's a fresco and her ****'s
a jeune homme called Unesco.

The mirror shines an echo of reality
a thousand times blurrier than I see.
The white lies praise closure, toxic autobiography,
as wax eyes glaze over, magnetic abnormality.

Painted mouth, a harsh sculpted shape.
Torn plastic hair, a blocked-off escape.
Between the fluorescence and the silver reply
the fruits of my labour or a sordid
fruit fly?

The scars on my shoulders, the spots on my face;
saturated colours polluting the lace.
Rouge tinted balm, a turned sickly ochre,
My elbows together so my chest looks fuller,
shoulders narrower, triangular figure;
carved by an egoist, all angles and fissures.

The moisturiser refuses to sink into my skin,
a tantaliser of trial, on the surface, a swim.
Impenetrable, inaccessible, my hands rip the surface.
A false doll face with a fast fading purpose.