I knew a woman who spent hours in front
of her magnifying mirror, chasing split hairs
like a huntress. She’d enter the intricacy of
parallel lines, watch forking tips grow into
reeds, swelling into bamboo shoots painted in
Chinese ink over transparent rice paper through
which she saw her son falling from a cliff, light
as a clipping, he lies at the bottom of the dark
ravine, his foot severed, tshuk tshuk tshuk
crisscross, cuts the slightest twist, he’s being
raised with pullies, in a fog she wanders in
deserted streets unable to find her way back,
she’d forgotten her own name, thinking of her
son’s severed foot bleeding, his thick fragrant
blood an oddity in the night scented with
rosemary and lavender, she thinks of mountain
lions, coyotes, a jugular vein prey to canines
sharper than shears, hears feline raspy tongues
licking the wound, refuses to see the man’s body
tremble, the tense hardening of muscles prior
to rigor mortis that would come so fast, yes,
he shouldn’t suffer she prays, eyes closed, finds
herself back in front of her bathroom mirror
holding the scissors, holding her breath, yes,
it was only an illusion and her son was recovering
now with nails stuck into his leg, surgeons cleaned
the wound nine hours long, gloved hands cut
tshuk tshuk sawed scraps, sewed back tissues
and bones, the rest of him whole, tshuk tshuk tshuk
the crisscrossing cuts the slightest deviance, none
will escape, crisscross she aims, tinkers with precision.