Shop Window Doppelgänger

Walking home, the street dark and wet,

I caught myself, a face I hadn't met

before, in the plate glass of a closed store.

A stranger looking back, wanting something more.

The streetlights stretched my eyes, pulled my mouth thin,

a slight distortion, letting someone in

who wasn't quite me, but close enough to sting.

A quiet, unexpected, unsettling thing.

My own jacket, collar up against the chill,

but the person there, they held themselves so still.

A momentary glitch. Then I walked on,

leaving that other self, alone, in the dawn

of streetlight glow.