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Alter Ego

Stephanie V Sears

The boy and I enter early dawn’s aspic of moisture and air,
as two units of being, scissored out of space,
tingling with death up and down our spines
in this disembodied capital of ghosts.
A tourmaline dome covers the river of miracles
that flows devouring whole tiers of urban filth,
but for memory’s haze ascending the ghats
in blue cobras of smoke.
Between acrid intakes, the alternative of a stench.
Morning prayers careen down the Ganges to Yon’s frontline
in a contagion of candles and awe,
like ragamuffins going through a department store.
The boy and I, convinced to be more than ourselves.
He sees her first and his licorice hair falls
in disquiet over his canine eyes. He hates disloyalty.
Her resemblance to me is essential, pervasive:
from boat to boat we replicate each other.
Which part of the aberration am I?
On which side of the mirror?
Do I go where she goes?
Who dissolves the other into dream?
Already the sun strides up the river towards us
and something of passing time rouses nostalgia.
She pushes upstream with a staccato of oars in the locks,
while, with suspicious ease, I glide seaward.
Our two crafts pass each other.
One of us slips back into the crypt of absence,
invisibility’s deletion.
Did the boy see it? Only he can reassure me
That it was a divine trick
from the fanged goddess of death and rebirth.

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