A Spitting Image

A Spitting Image?

I often see a lady I can’t place.

Have I met her? I couldn’t say.

Maybe she’s a person met

 when once on holiday away.

Maybe she’s a neighbour

or a person met when young:

Whoever she is, her identity’s safe:

it’s right on the tip of my tongue.

I’ve seen her in the butcher’s shop 

while waiting in the queue,

Standing opposite, and staring:

when I move, she moves, too.

Her speech is poor I know

It’s quiet and unclear. 

She can’t say what she wants

As her voice sounds really queer!

I’ve seen her having a hair do: 

she seldom says a word.

Sometimes she sits as if transfixed. 

I wonder what occurred

to makes her look so strange:

her face is like a mask!

But as soon as I turn round, she’s gone! 

One day I’ll have to ask.

Once, I saw her paying 

at the till in Tesco’s store.

She took so long, a queue grew up 

behind her. What is more,

She’d forgotten her Mastercard,

 then she couldn’t find her purse,

Then she started shaking, 

so the queue grew qeven worse.

I asked my friends one day 

if they had seen her anywhere-

the lady who walks slowly,

 shuffles, stumbles on the stair.

They said they’d seen her often, 

they’d even seen her that same day,

But before they’d told me who she was, 

before they’d turned and moved away.

But then, one night I had a shock! 

Those now familiar features 

Stared back at me. All I could see 

was two pathetic creatures 

Struggling hard to brush shared teeth. 

It took no great detection

To solve the riddle: she was me! 

She was my own reflection!

By. Val Bowden