IVY LEATHERBARROW
Commended - 2024 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Mirror'
Mice bites (in the mirror)
I went to the dentist the other day,
Routine check.
Gap, fill, drill, floss, glass.
Idle chittering like mice in the waiting room,
Who’ll get called next?
Sent for, to scurry to the “mouse trap”.
I find myself in the chair.
Sky pointing, mouth agape.
Pricks across my gums.
The mirror is slid across my teeth,
Shining onto the roof of my mouth.
Gummy and gaping: slick.
I am told half of it is missing.
Cleft, cloven.
A chip in the china plate ceiling.
This mirror glosses its light across my palate,
Halved. Its glints dissolve into the nothingness.
Cavern, burrowing like mice into my skull.
Cascade, they hold another mirror to my face.
Eye height,
Blanked out, smudgy glances.
A half looks back at me.
Side-split face,
One edge chewed, mice bitten holes
In the fabric of my skin.
The mirror winks at my shaky reflection.
Shelled, I stumble,
Retracing my breadcrumb steps back out.
Street shop windows glance as I pass,
The mirror of my movements
Show this hole, split, delved deeper,
Frayed edges shelved down my body
A half-person, shakily split
Door, key, lock, bolt.
I run upstairs on my one sided leg,
Mirrors mocking me from the walls of this mouse house.
And back to you.
You take my hand,
The one that's still there.
Puzzle pieces slotted together,
Like cats asleep in the sun.
Your one hand,
On my one hand
(the mice got at you too)
And we look into it,
The mirror,
It shows us a whole.