Reflection

I peer into a fun-house mirror, clouded
with emotion, as I reflect

on chapped lips, straying eyebrows,
dowager’s hump.
.
The doppelgänger there, the me-not-me,
a face I know, but cannot place, so

like that

pretty girl in faded Kodachrome
who never recognized her own worth.

Upon reflection, I am never present 
in anything I think I see.


Barbara Crary 2/22/24