Mourning Mirror
by Ed Ahern
Somewhere between my forties and fifties,
I began to stare at myself in the mirror
every morning and see, not the head
with missing hair and furrowing wrinkles
but rather a Kabuki mask of static design
I’d painted on my image over decades.
So, when sick or distracted enough
to suddenly glimpse my physical self
I almost drop the razor.
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty-odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 650 stories and poems published so far, and thirteen books. He works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he squats on the review board, and at Scribes Micro, where he’s the idle figurehead.