Self-Portrait as the Head of a Frozen Mouse

The feeling of losing something
is always the same. Last night a hairball coagulated
in my throat. I couldn’t swallow or cough it up
and for hours saliva formed small pools
in my mouth, pools that wouldn’t conjoin.
All night I watched my snake circle his tank,
standing so upright that his snout touched
the ceiling. In that dark he was a taut rope
weighed down by something heavy: a hairball,
maybe, or a head. I watched him search
for something he didn’t have—a comfortable hide
or a second mouse, or some other unnameable thing.
Briefly I rummaged the folds of my own bed,
even though I could see my keychain and smatter of cards
on my desk, boring into my eyes like hot stones.
They say you mirror the body language of those you love.
But yesterday at lunch, watching you fork raw onion strands
into your mouth with your thumb and pinky, I was so sure
that what I felt wasn’t love, not anymore at least. And yet
I couldn’t help but follow suit. In the morning I found my snake
had regurgitated his mouse—just the head, and still
frozen. But how could that be? I had left the mouse
out the whole day, waiting on its tiny body
to thaw. All day I napped. All day I woke again
and again to the feeling of my hands
being gone. Of course I’d check and there
my hands would be with all ten fingers still.

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M. Ezra Zhang (@mezrazhang) is a queer Chinese American writer based in Brooklyn. A Best New Poets and Pushcart Prize nominee, they have attended the Tin House Poetry Workshop and been recognized by the Poetry Society of the UK. They are an MFA candidate at New York University and the creator of the Simp Alignment Chart. Read their work in Ninth Letter, Redivider, Salt Hill Journal, and other publications, or find them at mezrazhang.com.