Disheveled, crazed, incomplete. Someday a grand red adult.

Young, male, crazy.

 

The side mirrors on the Toyota are favorites, anytime, as well as the windshield. Bedroom window, at 7:30 in the morning: peck, peck, peck-peck, peck. Pause, repeat. Any window, when the light is right.

Here’s me. And, there, glassed in, is this other guy. A young stud, just like me, only backwards. He’s got to give. Or make me give. But he just sits and cocks his head and pecks, so close, but keeps somehow just out of reach. He is not responding correctly. This is so weird! Why won’t he answer, or go the hell away?

It’s Narcissus in feather-drag. Such a handsome fellow, the other side of the glass. But it isn’t how it seems. Good fences make good neighbors, says Robert Frost. But he doesn’t say that, the neighbor does, Frost disagrees. Narcissus is slandered for self-love, self-absorption. But Narcissus doesn’t know that he’s the image in the pond. He loves the guy he sees, not himself.

Narcissism: love for a handsome stranger. It’s not a disorder, it’s love, disinterested and pure.

Let’s not even start on Echo.