Inwardly intimate,
quietly narcissistic
you only loved yourself
atop the small pebbles you once adhered to.
Tell me, did you court yourself
before you copulated,
or does time rule you
like it rules us upright fellows
with our many accessories
of passion and articulation and reason?
Suddenly, it seems
you weren’t so narcissistic after all
as three miniscule replicas
cling to the windowed-world you lived in.
They move slowly, like you did,
inching determinedly over surfaces
coated in green nourishment,
attached all the while
to resist the water’s sweeping flow.
You rest in the corner where you once loved your body
so much as to recreate it three times over,
but your glutinous form has fallen lifeless
into your coiled shell.
It now lies upside down.
If any were to mistakenly stumble upon
or curiously inquire within
the hole you once protruded from,
they would fall down the spiral,
into your tomb
and join you in death.