Trick Question Marie O’Rourke
Watching. Waiting. Alert. Posed and poised. Conscious, perhaps, that someone watches you, too? My eyes trace your elegant curves: ear, to neck, to spine, to tail. I stall, and here, the first discomfort — I dare not openly label it deception. A tail that seems to fall straight down, a shadow telling the wrong story, for stepping to the side, forward, angling my head, a generous hooked end is revealed. I fixate on that tail, its truth both curved and straight in a world all trick-of-the-light and talking shadows. Edging closer, another secret revealed: that you are only half; that you rely on a circle of silvered glass to make sense of what or who you might be. Half a body. Meticulously carved, faithful in every detail, but unbalancing too. I stare into your immovable, unreadable eyes. I note the grace and beauty of your features, the determined set of jaw, the strongly arched back, your firmly planted feet. I would reach and touch but resist, reluctant to shatter the illusion of silken fur atop twitching musculature. Fingernails catching on tiny indentations in carved resin — the opposite of softness and warmth — would undo me. When facts stare me in the face I’m always first to turn away. Stepping back I see the final deceit. The mirror now tells a completely different story, casts another form onto the space at my feet: the curved cat back and ears, the dangling tail, suddenly transformed into a rabbit ringed in a halo of light. Watchwaiting, waitwatching; catrabbit, rabbitcat.
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