Rachel Neve-Midbar

REFLECTION

Would you last more than a day without breath?
Oxygen withheld.

Then how did you last thirty years?
The woman within dissolves.

It happens.
The mirror leaks, her body contorts,

breasts erased like rubber
rubbed until pilled.

The house of her body pitted
as old fruit; left, the neat darkness

of pubic hair defining her
still: woman—

a bit of belly and bare
toes exposed to report:

she was here—in a mirror
that brims with emptiness.