Halfway

took the elevator down

turned left in the parking basement

in the lost and found there was a mirror

propped against pillars

of dust-soaked great american classics

it is as tall as my father, as wide

as my wingspan if my arms grew feathers

the girl in the mirror is half my age

with sun-stung hair and pink jelly shoes

she is afraid of heights and

science-class skeletons and the future

prisoners weighed down by boulders

their flesh rotting to spit-soaked bones

she laughs, long before i cared

about the curve of my smile and the shape

of my eyes, her eyes, those same eyes

i am looking for her amidst the concrete columns

looking for me in a lost and found

she slips away from within the glass frame

on the plywood shelf there lies

a beating heart, arteries welded to

drainage pipes, atriums and auricles that

fuse to stucco walls

and the space in my chest cavity

from the lost and found i find

femininity, quick temper, shattered laughter

my language in thrumming letters

and whispered poetry

a metamorphosis in the waiting dark