The Woman in the Glass

MissT

​I am looking in the mirror,

not for the ghost of your jawline

or the shared tilt of our brow,

but for the woman I left behind

to carry you.

​For twenty years, she was a scaffolding,

a temporary structure built to hold

the weight of a growing world.

Now the building is finished;

the inhabitant has moved out,

and the wood is silvered and bare.

​I trace the map of my own skin

these lines are not just your history.

They are the marks of a long-distance runner

who has finally reached the coast.

The reflection is unfamiliar,

not because she is older,

but because she is hers again.

​I pick up the brush.

I straighten my back.

The boy is gone, and the man is away,

but the woman in the glass

she is just beginning to speak.