I Didn't Know That Was Me

The window caught me at the wrong angle,

the light hitting the glass

in a way that made my face

unfamiliar.

I was walking past the storefront,

not paying attention,

and I saw someone tired

looking back at me.

It took a full second

for recognition to arrive.

A full second where I was a stranger

to myself,

where the face in the glass

belonged to someone else,

someone I didn't know.

My eyes were blank.

My expression was nothing.

There was a flatness there,

an absence,

like the person in the reflection

had given up on being

someone worth looking at.

Then I knew it was me.

Then I recognized the familiar shape,

the familiar tired,

the familiar blank.

But that second lingers.

That moment of not knowing.

I looked like someone who has been

slowly erased,

like the constant repetition

of getting up and going out

and coming home and going to bed

has finally worn the features down

to something generic.

I keep thinking about that second,

that gap between seeing

and knowing who I was seeing.

What if the recognition hadn't come?

What if I'd just kept walking,

not knowing

that the stranger in the glass

was me?