By Marc Jeff Lañada
Poetry

In front of the medicine-chest mirror, a generation apart,
or at least the collective days that finally brought me here,
I am but an image, alive and pensive, that refuses to budge,
to realize that the material composing the reflection
is quite different now, maybe a little rebellious now.
More often than not, there’s always sunlight
hopping from one surface to another—too many routes
but flashes before my eyes nonetheless—reminding that
the skin has to keep outgrowing itself over and over.
Like nostalgia that begs to be visited: How can it be done
when old images can already live on their own?
I lift the razor to the plain stretch of my jaw lathered
with foam, slowly slide the blade, checking progress
strip by strip, somehow hoping to see a wound.