can you see yourself through the lens of another person’s bend, if you could would you look

hummingbirds and preying mantises prance along the feeder outside my window

i know how this will play out, another bird carcass littering the ground

what does the bird see, just a bundle of patiently staring green sticks

what do you see when you look at me

a failed clone of someone with an ability to speak clearly, to enuciate proudly the narrow emotional pallette of fragility

she called me gorgeous and i shrunk into my chair, smaller and smaller under the intensity of her misguided search for more

she asked what i could give her

easy

scars and fleeting moments of pleasure

she moaned under her breath and said that sounds delicious so i went to the bathroom and snuck out the window into the dirty alley behind the restaurant

i don’t know if i was the hummingbird or the mantis

if the metaphor is applicable

she called it hard to get

i explained it was impossible to comprehend

she called it love and i called it a bear trap that would leave one of us crippled and the other stuffed on the mantle of forgotten odes

she laughed at my fear stricken gaze, called it shades of vulnerable beauty

i called it the graveyard shift

she said my soul was comfortable, lived in, broken in

i snorted and said it was broken down

she said the bedroom was our safe place, where we could be exactly who we really were with no fear of reprecussions

i called it our coffin

where we laid each other with callous hands numbed from digging six feet farther apart

she said if you could see what i see you’d be amazed and i agreed

she asked what i saw when i looked at her and i stared at the preying mantis praying for the hummingbird to get close enough to strike

she repeated the question

i just stared out the window knowing if she came into reach i would eat her until she was just a shaking mess twitching and convulsing

she took silence as consent, content to work meaning out of the emptiness between us

all she wanted was to bob on the waves of my body of water

when she looked at me she saw the sun’s rays playing on the waves

and only i knew she was facing west and it was setting as her mistakenly directionally challenged mind misread the compass needle

i saw what she saw but recognized illusionary deceit so i took her glasses and cleaned the lenses for her with my dirty shirt