by M. Joseph Boehler

a glass fogged with the dust of daily habits reflects an unfamiliar face,

a collage of half-remembered stories pieced together by routine.

the image is both stranger and familiar,

a figurative expression of the self built from ordinary moments

and trembling under the weight of its own making.

the raw stare forces a reckoning: identity is a narrative we pour out,

ink emptied onto the page,

yet leaving only the outline.

to look is to accept that the person we see is a hypothesis,

a philosophical sketch that changes each time we look at it.