For some of us the only way of knowing we are here at all, going
across and going down,
exquisitely temporal though at no point believable; fragile; tragic.
The mirror redeems

the desire to wish,
what we cannot see of ourselves staring back with its most accurate face.
The closer you come
the less believable—

life size that dangerous democracy that will destroy its subjects.
Lookalikes, miniatures,
as in the world of pine, are stabs at freedom:
this limb twisted impossibly, that height not naturally achieved,