REFLECTION

She kept showing up. Even when she couldn’t look.

She never remembered spending much time in front of the mirror.
Her self-esteem wouldn’t allow it.

Before twelve, she hardly noticed it.
Back then, it was hair. Where it grew. Where it didn’t.

At sixteen, someone called her a slut.
She avoided her reflection for weeks.

Seventeen wanted popularity.
Eighteen stalled.

Nineteen and twenty blurred.

At twenty-one, she began to speak louder than she felt.
By twenty-four, she searched the glass for someone braver.

In her late twenties, she looked more often.
She saw someone attractive. Someone almost ready.

In her thirties, she stopped flinching.

Pregnancy changed the outline again.
Softness blooming. Edges rounding.
She admired it. She feared losing it.

By forty, she tried to reclaim what had shifted.
By fifty, she no longer tried to win.

Past sixty, she passed the mirror without slowing.
But sometimes, in the half-light, she still looked
and caught herself almost smiling.