The mirror doesn’t lie. An eighty-year-old
woman stands in front of the glass, turns
and gazes at the folds of skin, deposits
of body fat, not so delicate wrinkles, all signs
her life has been lived not judiciously, but joyously.
Taking in the view, the old woman wonders what
might have been different, what she might have
added in, what might have been left out. More exercise?
Less cake? More poetry? Fewer broken bones? No.
Broken bones were not a choice but an accident.
How much of life is choosing? How much a quirk
of fate? How did it come about that this was her life and not
someone else’s? The mirror shows only the slow decline
of her body, not what she cherishes in her mind.
