Instructions for Cleaning a Mirror

Image of a mirror in a dark roomI have my secrets. I take my time, stare at my face until I’m a stranger, a she who is not me. A she who helps herself to whatever will buff the sharp edges of the world. Yesterday a yellow pill pinned the sun to the center of the sky where it remained unstained by clouds. Waiting for the bus, she danced to the thunder of drums from a car idling at a red light. A glass door gave her back herself, a whirling dervish in sneakers. If you drove by just then you’d think, now there’s a happy gal.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis; A Brief Natural History of an American Girl (Accents Publishing, 2012), and Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Recent work has appeared in the Cincinnati Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, diode, and in the anthologies New Microfiction and Best Microfiction 2019. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006.

Photo Credit: Amaya Rodrigo

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