HEATHER CHAPMAN

Second Prize - 2024 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Mirror'

 

Two Vampires Cut Each Other's Hair in Front of the Mirror

And you’re gentle, though I’d wanted an execution, 

the sibilant winking cut. I’m greedy, ambitious 

for the finite, the slow dropping of hair 

something like grief, or grief’s obedience, 

the fall so dutifully following the knife. You turn 

your chin, test your profile. A portion of night 

 

swells the mirror, where your features should reunite. 

You pretend not to care. You’re cutthroat 

on sentiment, swear you love our daily patterns: 

the bloom of joy after dinner; the bitterness 

souring your gums. For how long have I studied 

the shape of your mouth – its disrepair, 

 

pink and honest in destruction. You swear 

you’re kind. Only once did I not believe you – night 

before Christmas, the streets candied 

with lights. Canines botching a cut 

between tendons, you’d laughed an obituary, 

suddenly vicious, suddenly nocturnal, 

 

and I’d wished for a cool glass to return 

your image softer. But it’s late, and your hair 

is so easy in my hands. I feel like a habitant 

in myself. I could own my mouth, tame the night 

that comforts my outline. Your offcuts 

scatter across my lap – accidental ingredient 

 

for religion, like the coins or the bloodied 

calf. But you get nervous around the eternal, 

prefer to imagine yourself fragile, cut 

from a finite sky – both of us heir 

to nothing. Now, you’re talking about a fortnight 

in the 1300s, when your new overbite 

 

still made you nervous. Time’s orbit 

forgets to clasp: your old medieval 

accent rises bold and green. This ignition 

of vowels, everything already turning 

into something else. Nothing is rare, 

not even the terror – second hand, clearcut. 

 

We’re obedient to no-one. The mirror neglects 

the pattern of blood at your cuticles, bitter and definite. 

You turn to smile at me, and I am glad I do not have to share.