MIRROR ROOM, MEHRANGARH FORT by Chloe Martinez

            Jodhpur, Rajasthan

You live in a high fort above a blue city. The rooftops below
speckled with laundry. At night the distant echoes
of a hundred brass bands, a hundred weddings. The blue
of the city is not quite robin’s egg, not exactly
the blue of chicory. Outside the city is the desert.

Don’t tell it like a story. It will sound too beautiful.
You stand on a high parapet, in the rustle and coo
of pigeons, under filigreed eaves. When you step over red
velvet ropes, leaving the museum behind, you find rooms
empty as the moon, floors carpeted in desert silt.

In one bedchamber-turned-cave, you hold your breath, you bow
before a rank hill of bat guano. You touch niches
for the ghosts of little lamps, and frescoed girls dance
with gods along the wall. Plaster dusts your fingertips.
Stained glass windows turn your thin skin rainbow. You take

a photo of a white hallway: Mughal arches echo, fade into
light. Not a story, not an image. It is a map. At the end of the hallway,
a balcony—the ground hazily distant—the wide-winged
turkey vultures gliding so close—hold tight
the railing, notice how soft the sandstone carved

into curling vines. Notice it is crumbling. Mehrangarh means
Sun Citadel. Sheesh Mahal means Mirror Palace, or else
Hall of Mirrors, but it is just a tiny space, dim, claustrophobic
with reflections: wild, intimate room, it wants an audience.
Here you are, alone with your ten thousand selves.