The Blanket

…and it is therefore not only myself that I saw when looking in the mirror. Who were all these other people? First, there was my mother and father. They looked at my frame with a tenderness that I wanted to believe in. Father had his hand on my shoulder but his hand didn’t touch, it hovered on top of me just so, two positives of magnets trying to connect, or negatives rather, and whatever it was he dared not say was in that narrow space between his hand and my shoulder. Behind my parents were my grandparents. They have been gone for so long now that I had a hard time focusing on their faces. I think they were rooting for me, but I’m not sure. Again behind them my classmates from years past. They were cheering me on, laughing, except every time I tried to turn my head this way or that they got quiet, and the more I kept moving the more reserved, even alarmed they got. Then came teachers and such. They too had an endearing countenance but I could see the long hard rulers behind their backs. At that point I had begun to lose sight of myself. Still I kept looking further in.

Now there was the biographer, noting every single detail down but not without adding his base little twist to each mannerism and sound I made. A quiet cough turned into bile thrown on others, a shy smile into a malevolent grimace and so on, but I think that is how it is with all biographers who have had the misfortune of writing about those like me. Those like me were there as well. Some had their shit kicked in and some even more than that, but they all persisted, wading through an ocean of bones and guts and mire. And all the while around flew helicopters and war planes, machinery of the end of days ready to pummel even the ocean to a slimy dust so that none of us could remain, and remain we did. And in front of all that tumult and rage and noise and violence I was reminded of myself, bony face and muscles in vile places, and my reflection winked at me conspiratorily, ”just between us two, this” the wink said, and that is all it took for me to open my mouth and breathe out fire from the stars of all the nights I stayed up to cry for my lost youth. Youth, youth! Nothing is lost as long as I live!

I stepped away from the mirror and threw a blanket on top of it. I looked out the window on the opposite wall, and it was nice out that day, and I felt the day held some promise.