Poetry Thursday

By Daylight

In the tropical glass of a cool, foreign
mirror, I saw myself for the first time:
head forward on my unstraightened spine
from too much reading, cheeks scored

by impatience. I can never control
my eyes - gray, saddened at will,
with an uncurbed glare for looked-for double-dealing,
but still looking half a simpleton's after all.

And then, where the surface wavered,
I saw surprise - a sweating older woman, her coming
printed in faint lines around my mouth - and loved
the old bitch, whole, as if she were my next-door neighbor.

-Elizabeth Macklin