Ode to Bathroom Mirror Altars I’ve Built for Myself

I’m moving back east to a basement studio that
barely holds my furniture, but you know what?
It’s got a closet just for my makeup. The bathroom
lighting is exquisite. I know. It’s hardly an upgrade,
but the planet is on fire. I’d rather stay inside
loving myself at the medicine cabinet, glowing
tiers of glass potions and indulgences and there
I am: the patron saint of queer brown femmes
in my cold sepulcher painting myself to life so I
can stomp into the day and silently tell the world
not to fuck with me. My eyebrows are Disney villain
pointy for a reason. I can do them on the train, forget
a mirror. My hands are steady like a bass line from
all my practice in foggy compacts and bumpy bus

rides. Listen, I’m downsizing. I leave my small vanity
near the alleyway its surface scuffed by bobby pins
and blunts rolled in pink paper, from acrylic towers
of mocha lipsticks less than half a shade apart.
I’ll miss my vanity, but I don’t need it. No one
can tell if you get ready curved over a single stall
sink with a spiderweb mirror or if you beat your
face beatified in ring light flanked by cherry
perfect studio bulbs sitting in a wingback chair
in tufted blush velvet. This is about the finished
product: big reveals with feather fans shimmying.
I silently thank my vanity for its service, but

it was never made for a gay millennial femme.
A woman says to me you’ll outgrow all of that but
I know the truth: to me, every painted lashline is
a landscape. Every brushstroke on my face is
an ancient ritual in repetition, so the next time
I’m flush with cash, I’m buying booze, lights, plus
more lipstick. I’m going out screaming in full glam.

Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She is the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press 2023). Her poems can be found in the Baltimore Review, New Orleans Review, the Offing, Poet Lore, and Vassar Review.