If I had the cash to install
a giant portrait of myself
I wouldn’t want it
looking back at me either.
Keep my eyes
on those bluebirds up
and away!
My gaze
judging me perpetually
in the living room,
the present me
already judging.
I guess early on
I would get used to it.
Walk past the portrait
without registering
a thought. And one day
snap out from a daze staring
as the self stares away,
and then the next
in the morning’s
mirror– cracked,
smeared with
fingerprints
and dust.

(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Fall 2019)