
Skinny Mirrors
By SUE HYON BAE
Which is more suspicious,
mothers or mirrors?
Impossible to ask them
to be honest. But someone is lying.
Once when the elevator opened she laughed
That mirror is compressing us into
half ourselves
and I couldn’t see it.
Once sampling mascara at a Clinique counter
the hand gently trembling
the brush was disproportionate.
Wrist too thin for fingers
or fingers too fat for wrist.
(Which is worse?)
Once she said I should eat more but I
couldn’t see it. Once she said You shouldn’t
buy that dress the sleeves
don’t work and she
was right. Funny the fitting room mirror
didn’t tell me.
Once the bathroom mirror was
too small and untrustworthy
so I walked to my mother’s
room to borrow her wall mirror
and the door zoomed out while the walls
zoomed in like I was in a poor horror film.
That last one may just have been me.
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Sue Hyon Bae is a MFA student at Arizona State University.