Self-Portrait with Mirror and History Book
by Cass Garison
I know what they did
to people like me
in other lives. Shoved us somewhere
windowless: ceiling begat
sky, dark grey streaks
across its surface begat
clouds. When he gave me pills
for the first time, dropped
them like baby teeth
down my throat I envisioned
my death: a martyrdom,
the first of its kind.
Shackled to the earth
by my wrists I sprouted wings
like a swallow’s only
sharper: sliced the wind
until we both
turned to flame. I am in the room
again, pulled like Christ
between bedposts. Birds
stretch into a ribbon
across the evening. Remember
when I cut the tip off my finger
and called it the moon?
Cass Garison has work published or forthcoming in River Styx, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art Online, Washington Square Review, Salamander, Nimrod International, and others and is currently a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.