Taylor Light

Narcissus and my Psychoanalyst

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

The precursor to the mirror is the mother.

The seer warned my mother of myself,

As an infant, one discovers love or

how the clearest glimpse of watered self

care reflected in the mother’s eyes.

let me gleam upon another face.

It seems you look but do not recognize

Who are you? Can you see me? Embrace

the face before you—enantiomorphic pair—

this touch that skims the glassy surface

ceasing the urge to know those hands, that hair,

like an oil paint glaze. Metamorphose

congruent, but not superposable.

from reflection to flesh. If you refuse,

The image, then, is inconsolable;

if only a little pool lends us partial views

as are you, with unresponsive face,

as vacant as an echo, let me go—

collecting parts of yourself in any place:

but I’m stuck, like the shade of a shadow

rivers, glossy book covers, the chrome

turning dark then darker. Growing weary,

of a sink, or silver lamps. Thoughts of home

I tuck into the verdant grass. A theory:

turn cold as clotted ink. Do you love

“golden and white, the white around the gold,”

yourself? A moving mirror holds no love.

is not the flower but the feeling of being consoled.

Taylor Light has had poems either appear or forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA student at the University of Florida, where she teaches creative writing and serves as an editorial assistant for Subtropics.