A SERIES OF OPPOSING REFLECTIONS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS
Presumably, when something breaks you
fix it. Garage door opens—the grinding
of metal wheels on metal rails rattles
the bedroom floor. All the records of our conduct:
lost fortunes and shattered glass, the hole you put
in the laundry room door. Tonight you’re back so late.
Who are you bearded man who
alternately shares and does not share
this home now becoming merely a house?
We are contradictions, anomalies that lie
together at night, where in my dreams I prune
the unwanted limbs of our marriage, burn them
in a furious bonfire in the middle of our street.
When did you become so bent?
What made you fervent for always being right,
for speaking too loudly in front of the children
no matter what I say. Like rainfall we animate
parts of the storm—then wait for darkened clouds
to pass. Once I was something precious—
an emerald, black opal—now picayune as a pimple,
something you seek to cure, something to wish away.
The garage door closes. The thud of your footsteps
crosses the laundry room, down the hallway,
the kitchen, then up the flight of stairs.
How will you arrive this evening?
Should I feign sleep—submit
like the walls of our bedroom, fixed
to the framing by the hardness of nails?
Sometimes there are no tools that can rebuild
a fractured structure—sometimes demolition
is all that remains. It makes no difference
how I find you tonight—no difference in the way
your hand turns the knob to the door,
in the way the door to our bedroom opens—
this time, so late.
Author’s Bio
Angela Rebrec’s work has appeared in journals such as Prairie Fire, EVENT, Grain,
PRISM international, NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2020, as well as in the anthology Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions, 2020). You can view Lake Song, a collaboration with Mickie Wadsworth, for ART SONG LAB 2020 at www.artsonglab.com/2020- videos. Angela lives on unceded Musqueam and Tsawwassen lands.