Mary Walker Graham (Boston, USA): "Double"

Here is a box of fish marked tragedy.
Is it different from the dream

in which your alter ego kills the girl?
You are the same, and everyone knows it,

whether tracing the delicate lip of the oyster shell,
or sharpening your blade in the train car.

The marvelous glint is the same.
Though you think you sleep, you wake

and walk into the hospital, fingering
each instrument, opening each case with care.

The scales fall away with a scraping motion.
You are the surgeon and you are the girl.

Whether you lie like feathers on the pavement,
or coolly pocket your equipment, and walk away…

You are the same; and you are the same.
You only sleep to enter the luminous cave.

originally published in Ocho #11, guest edited by Adam Fieled

© Mary Walker Graham 2007