Borrowed Skies

The first mirror left before the thaw,
slipping from its hook so quietly
the dust remained in its shape,
as if absence could imitate glass.

By April, every mirror in the county
had found the river bed.

They drifted there at dusk,
silver faces turned upward,
catching crows, rain, bruised clouds,
the last thin seam of daylight.

The current gathered them without breaking a single one,
laying them shoulder to shoulder until the water
glittered with borrowed skies.

Children leaned over the bank expecting minnows
and found winter threaded through their own hair.
Women returned home to empty sleeves
where lovers had not yet disappeared.
Old men watched their mouths fill with names
that had never managed to forgive.

After that, the town abandoned reflections.

We buttoned our coats by memory,
braided one another’s hair with mercy,
trusted the shape of a familiar voice more than
the certainty of a face.

Only the river kept waiting,
kept watching.

Day after day it worried each reflection against its stones,
sanding sharp melancholic ache into something smooth enough to carry,
until sorrow shone like wet slate beneath the surface.

When my turn came, I carried the last mirror wrapped in my coat.
Inside, the woman staring back at me rested her palm against the glass.

Mine rose to meet it.

The river held us both for one long breath—the woman already weathered into light,
and the one still learning how to survive the syllables of her own name.

Then the current loosened my fingers.
The mirror drifted away among the others, bright as a fallen moon.

Now, when evening scatters gold across the water,
people stop along the bridge and say that it is beautiful.

They never notice how many faces
the river is still carrying.