An ant crawls across the face of a mirror. But the mirror is not a mirror, it’s the sky: an even monotone gray, flat and dull as my hair in the morning. And the ant is really an airplane, so distant I can make out neither the shape of its wings nor the roar of its engines. It moves in such a straight line that it can’t be an ant; ants are notorious stumblers. Sometimes after my morning smoke, I stumble into the bathroom and stare at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, wondering why I’m still here.

confrontation
face-to-face with
another day

Elizabeth Alford