Spider husks rustle,
tangles
of hair ink the drain,
the sink's stacked plates threaten clatter—
somewhere a siren,
somewhere
the chatter of birds.
Here, the ovate dial-tone remotely mouths.
Sometimes I see the mirror
is just
a mirror. The opulent flesh—
just a scattering of leaves.
© 2006 Lauren Mitchell
grew up in DC, but ran away to California at 14. She moved to Ecuador at 20, and then to Hawaii a few years later. Now she's back in DC, finishing her BA and working on her first poetry collection, about her time in California. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Pebble Lake Review and 2River view.
