Panopticon

by india southgate.

The door is creaking.
We wait,
Under the weight of anticipation,
For a visitor.
I invite them in
To sit down comfortably
And tell me their ailments 
And what initiated them
Motivated them 
To move their feet
All those miles.
They said it wasn't really that far at all,
Not hard going,
Nary a misstep,
When one is driven by revelation,
Or a divination to help another see,
The path is easy.
I query,
What is it they ought to show me?
A mirror is held up to me and I see,
Me in three days,
Dusting the
Me in when I was twenty,
Moving the
Me when I am married,
Crying at the
Me when I am willowed,
Loopy at opacity 
And when I am dust,
Ready to be sundered,
Flowing In utero.
I move the view to my bed,
Where an onion skinned clump of cells,
Dozes with its translucent arms, 
Twisting into comforted mandalas,
Sagging my mattress,
Gravely.
I watch myself closely,
In this weakened chair,
And I am reflected back,
A thousand times.
A thousand lives,
As omniscient as the,
6 hands about my temple,
Agonising in symmetry,
Two faces repulsed,
Unamicable in profile,
Monitoring,
All about the room,
All the days of me, 
Running in parallel,
Silently stuck in eternity,
And it sounds like,
A million tapes,
Running through at once.

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