There is no crease in this armor.
Your edges are too smooth to scale
with bruised fingers and tired eyes.
Joints creak
No light escapes from the salt of your womb
where you are ragged and boiling with ants
prickling up
and down
your steel-plated spine.

From between the cracks
secrets leak out
and rust shut.

Your image in my spoon is bloated
and breach-birthed.
Beads of condensation slide
into the converse-concave well
where I cup your breath in my hands,
knowing it will always trickle through.
I cannot touch or see where you lie.
You trust in echoed watercolor futures
glinting off your soap-bubble skin.
It becomes your name.

This is not a mirror,
it’s just metal.