on the walls.
Her father throws himself on the casket
over and over again. The cries from her family
echo. They get louder.
The evil me is in the middle of the room.
Her breath smells like cheap wine.
She’s wearing a slip and I can see her nipples.
I’m like, OK I kinda look really good?
She is shifting. She is in a wedding dress now.
She is an older woman with a knife in her hand.
Now she is my mother.
My sisters.
My middle school bully.
Now she is Selena, her hips swaying back and forth.
I get closer and closer to her.
A gun appears in my hand.
It’s a cowboy gun then
it’s a glock
then it’s a machine gun
then it’s a water gun
then it’s a wet fish.
Evil me shifts and shifts until I am inches away from her.
Now she is just Selena.
Selena wearing my headphones.
Selena wearing my jean jacket.
Selena smiling at me.
There are tears in her eyes.
She stops dancing but she does not stop smiling.
Oh, how it hurts me.
I say, Don’t leave me, Selena.
She says nothing to me.
I say I swear to god I’ll do it, Selena!
I point the gun to my head but the gun
is a red rose,
then a rubber chicken, then a real chicken,
then a small white dove flying away.
She will never know
the way Dr. Louis Elkins
described her heart:
A normal heart looks like a fist,
he said to the jury.
Bright pink, or red.
Her veins had collapsed
by the time I had arrived.
Her heart was blue.
I point the gun back at Selena and it’s just a gun.
She turns around.
Don’t go, I say.
There is no sound.
She’s crumpled on the floor.
I kneel beside her.
Her outfits change.
The purple jumpsuit.
The black studded bustier and the newsboy hat.
A classic white blouse tied at the waist and a pair of jeans.
Pajamas.
On the screens, static.
In my ears, deafening dial-up.
Her body is gone, now.
I am left with the wires
and my blood,
the blood that made this.
Oh Selena, it happened again.
and it is my doing.
My fault, my desire
to turn a mirror
into a person.
My own two stupid fists,
punching the air
but still bleeding.
You appear behind me,
Your hand on my shoulder.