4/7/25: why i am not a self-portrait

 Today's prompt. Here's the poem that inspired the prompt; this will work well for poem to share today as I am running short on time.

i'm not equipped to look myself in the face for long periods of time, unwilling
to reconcile this eye's asymmetry and the uneven pattern of the electric razor's
laconic march forward across my cheeks, my neck, the switchbacks of the chin.

my hand is a cruel minister, my heart a cold mistress, my brain a sad labrador retriever-known he's done wrong and returning to the scene of the crime for an inverted reward. 

this line
angled just so,
flattens me;
reduces the
charm and
unloads
fine-motor
deficiencies.

so much erasure shrapnel
so many sighs. grunts of 
disapproval.

i've been wrestling with
the me here and there
and the limitations
of this vessel-the hand,
soul, brain, heaps of
praise, admonishments...

the masterpiece is on back order. we'll settle for what we've got today.