My Narcissus
My narcissus was a gift, a raw round heart encased in paper brown skin
that flaked off in my hands. He slept in my palm, nestled into the dark
space as my thumb closed around him.
After I put him into his bed, covered with cold earth, I waited, and he opened his fist, reached up through the soil with his three fingered hand.
You know the rest of the story, how he became lost in himself, drowned
in his idea of himself.
All that's left now is his withered body, cut off, turning to dirt, the snow slowly burying him. But his heart, the one I loved first, beats underground.
Kris Bigalk's second full-length collection, Enough, traces the interplay between the experience of codependency and the myths of Echo and Narcissus. Lyrical, raw, and honest, these poems invite us to consider what it means to be satisfied, how to make peace with each other and ourselves, and how to know when enough is enough.
