Every Black Futures Month & Black History Month, we republish brilliant works and conversations with Black organizers, writers, and artists from Room‘s past issues, to live on our site in perpetuity.
This week, we’re sitting with Danielle Douez’s “obsidian mirrors” from Room 48.2 Travellers, which takes us on a surreal journey of time and tenderness both.
“obsidian mirrors”
by Danielle Douez
from Room 48.2 Travellers
I arrive at the threshold of your face
the space between knocking and answering
as if summoned. we are gathered here to gaze
(dance?) into a delicate, decadent shadow
it’s a repetition in seeing, each
with a longer exposure. a practice
in lifting stones without appraising
age? nobility?⎯your surfaces resist polishing
this time, tasting lavender
this time, searching for silver
this time, washing caca d’oie
off my tongue like a profanity
this time, settling for gold
this time, lingering on violet just
around the irises, plucked from oblivion
and smashed over a hockey puck
I resist the violence of committing
to a colour. instead, boring the particular
invisible particulates of these clouds deep
into the fossil of my lungs for future reference
maybe one day experts will study the record
say, floods like this only come
say, comets like this only come
say, mirrors like this only come
once every twelve steps. I swear
I’m trying to look away while I’ve
still got a will, but nature resists
the sirens of domestic symmetry
again, opacity gifts us safe passage
never naming, but still saying.
my higher power insists: let’s
raise a glass, a good looking glass
to the highly viscous lava
pooling inside the wells of your
orbits. I’m cupping the oracle
of your eyes between my hands
gazing back at an old question
that aches like a stolen wisdom
after an alchemist’s refusal to
repatriate organ to body, stone to ash.
Sipping slips into slurping,
into sinking teeth, into a mourning
trickster with no tears. this is love
without pigment, a collection of
rods and cones and cortices. I step
into this house of mirrors, trusting
neither reality nor reflection not to bleed
into the sky, already dusty and full of rocks.
Read our 2026 Black History/Black Futures Month Statement and Reading List here.
For more works that navigate how we dream, manifest, and transform, order Room 48.2 Travellers now.
