When you stand in front of the brightly lit shop windows at midnight
what will you say to the glamorous mannequins?
Are they modern mermaids imprisoned in this human store
with unrequited wishes locked behind their lost feet?
What are they looking at, from their fake button eyes?
At what moment do they choose to pause, then sculpt into forever?
Outside the shop windows: an old man, a young man,
a mother, a sweeper...Who are they, wheeling past their nameless reflections?
Why do they cut their own wreckage into triangles and circles
& tie them with pearls in different sizes of nothingness?
In the Chinese myth, an angel must fulfill the dance request from the Fisherman who steals the feather robe she relies on to fly
back home, this is just a faded myth, human beings leave their passports, nationalities, & genders everywhere, this is how they live their lives, how they drag into another party. Give me the phosphene of another party. Give me the blades I never divined. To mess up every crochet that makes us who we are
and what we have. I promise to love the plunge.