Your face is not your face
It is the legend of your mind
Summary and immediate

Your mind is not your mind
It is a map
Approximate and decided

Asia is a single thought
It is iceberg-blue
Your thoughts are reversed icebergs

You can’t control your face
The Empire has over-reached
Expressions

Have become flags
They serve the dominion
Of expediency and belief

In others in me
I have only listened
To the colour of your voice

You were saying something
About how it felt
To be subjected to this

To be so vulnerable
To being lost
To losing your sovereignty

Of thought
Of thinking what you don’t think
You say everything

You say emphatically
Name names
As if you named them

Your sentences are longhand
Noun-heavy imperatives
Your you is accusative

You swear
More than you swear
Blame is used as a form

Of evidence
Everything is subtext or expletive
All waste and want

You laugh
Without the companionship
Of laughter

You are in no doubt
This is brave
I have no doubts either

I am as unbroken water
Mirror me
Let us be two mirrors

Let no one be left looking
At themselves

Photograph © Sergei Krupnov