Blue windows, black mirror

You are about to sculpt me in that room

in Verona; its either 1997 or maybe its 2011,

you are about to sculpt my belly with the hands that have just hung

the black mirror above your bed, our bed,

with its sheets and scalloped counterpane.

When you’re about to sculpt, you blow air

into your hands; you cup your hands as if

you were about to make an owl cry, or indeed, hold

a newborn owl, wondering at its slip -on skin and elastic bones.

I am staring up at one of the blue windows;

your hands approach; I am sculpting my own belly,

with its firstborn, then second. I am carving images of children

slick the skin clay, flick them off; they race

like mice into free fields; they creep, stowaways,

on passing ship or plane to re-join their lives in England.

Their futures ripple in the mirror, the black mirror

which you have hung above the bed before the blindfold:

yes, its best to sculpt my body blind,

better for me to sculpt yours when I can see all

in electric blue light. And so the windows have turned black

and the mirror is craning to see, pornographer

in a hood; photographer obsessed with her darkroom,

her chemicals, with the final shimmering

act of bringing us back to the surface. I sculpt your body,

the blindfold slips, the mirror turns blue.