Car Mirror Stranger

Rushed, lipstick smeared,

hair doing its own thing,

I caught it,

that quick, smeared image

in the side mirror of a parked sedan.

Not mine.

A stranger's jaw, too sharp,

eyes too wide,

mouth a grim line

under a thin coat of haste.

A flicker of someone else's bad morning,

then the bus hissed past,

and it was gone,

leaving just the ache

of not knowing that face

that claimed to be me.