Domestic Hallucination

Veronica Schorr

They peer at me intrusively

seeing all the lives I have already lived,

return feeling to my cold clammy feet.

And isn’t that just like a re-rebirth

to mimic the feeling of trying to walk around

on legs gone numb

from lack of blood?

A trickle of sensation—

I remember burning my chin on the cookie tray.

Too young

too short to know reaching

can be dangerous. Nose-first,

pain second.

I don’t want to live too long, and really,

who does?

Each calming snip, snip

silent fall of hair onto bathroom tile

a singe, a loss

my sixty-year-old self will know

in 2060, when Halley’s Comet returns again

returning me to the softly-turned earth.

My mom gives me a child-like

bob while I hear a whispered

To be young

is a gift.

These black and white hexagons.

What? I ask her

I said, did you have fun

on your trip?