Looking In The Mirror

   

Xavier was his real name, but he made it die years ago. Whoever he was, he took a view in the mirror and saw all the things he hated. First he saw his face like stone, with grey eyes to prove it, underneath his raven-coloured hair, his forehead which more often than not held beads of sweat. His eyes drifted off themselves, past the crooked nose, the dry, chapped lips, down the long, skinny neck, and onto the torso. Once so full and fair, athletic and healthy, now skin and bone where he could almost see his ribs poking through. He turned his body to the side and looked at himself from another angle. Even less on the sides, he thought, like paper, and suddenly he watched the anger flush through his face as his fist made the mirror fall from the place it once stood so proudly and sternly ultimately down to the floor.

    He picked up a piece from the sink and looked at himself through it, only seeing his eyebrow and his stoney iris. He wondered how it turned to this. I never was Xavier, he thought. Names bring such responsibility, such personality; Xavier is such a proud name, so unique and bold, fit for only the best and bravest, kings, knights, professors, warriors. I am none of those; I’ve been hidden in a shell for years, but even when I leave, I am just another civilian, another tile on the floor, another seed on the berry. He did gave himself a new name many years ago, however: Green. It started out with a child’s simplicity and ignorance: it was just his favourite colour in the pack of crayons, but as he thought about it more and more, he saw more in green; renewal, freshness and birth, beginning and life. But there were also the ugly: sickness, greed, jealousy, envy. You cannot have a coin without two sides.

    I’ll go by Green again, he thought, because anything is better than Xavier. He bent his head down to his toes, his black hair poking the resting place of the mirror. There he saw himself dozens of times, in the smaller fragments of the mirror, so unflatteringly. He felt unfortunate to have to see his entire image, the entire body, getting smaller from toe to head. When he saw himself, he knew it would happen, no matter how little he wanted it to. It was an impossible bet, so unfair, and he closed his eyes and began to remember.

    He was back in his car with the boxes packed and taped in the backseat. He was driving away from home with no one in the driveway to wave goodbye to him. His dark green car was an envy of the schoolkids with the roar of the engine, sharp edges, and vintage body. They’re never seeing it again, he thought, because he was never going back to that school. He wanted to, he truly wanted to see his friends and get his education, get a wonderful career and make his parents proud, but life had started now, and it was not patient. He bowed his head and began the muscle car, making it express it’s husky screeches down the streets, until he made it to the apartment, torn-apart by termites and residents that degraded and had eaten even worse than termites. He opened the door and saw an empty and white rectangle. He walked in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, vintage and foggy, like a shower was permanently running behind him, and viewed his black hair, closing his eyes.

    Four days earlier, his brother had died. He had some kind of cancer, a real aggressive type that chewed away it’s hunger angrily and quickly. Zach hurt, and in his last few weeks, he said he wanted to die. What a horrible thing to think, Green recollected, especially for a thirteen year old. His parents blamed him a lot for it, and blamed him tough. It was his fault that he never hugged Zach enough, that he never invited him to play with his friends. Green was too busy with gang members, his mother alleged, to focus on what really mattered. Well, now that he was gone, Green could confirm that he did really matter, he mattered a lot, enough to get Green swung around and kicked out, assaulted and abused. He moved his eyes down from the mirror when it was still intact, and rolled a sleeve back on his brown leather jacket, seeing scars of a cigar from a father turned into a drunkard, and bruises the shape of fingerprints. He sighed warmly and rolled the sleeve back down. He didn’t have that jacket anymore, some young gun he dated must have stolen it.

   

    He opened his eyes and he was back in reality. He was standing shirtless in a bathroom with the remains of a mirror scattered around him. He saw his face many times in the small fragments like he had a wasp’s eyes, and his wasp eyes turned to look out the bathroom door. It was three months since it happened, since he left a loving, warm home, and made it big in an eyesore. He had a leather couch but not much more. It’s where he slept after working and sat during meals of nachos or chow mein. It’s where he watched his television until his connection was cut from overdue bills. It where he sat and read, prose and poetry. He smiled and began to laugh, because this all reminded him of these poems he read when he still could. One of them was Shakespeare, one of the sonnets, how did it go again? ‘Look thee into the glass and tell the face you viewest/ Now is the time for that face to form another’, or something like that. Come on, Green, you know better than this, he thought as he lightly pushed a fist to his forehead. What was that other poem? Something he read while he was still in school. ‘This habitation-bones and flesh and skin-where I reside…’ Yes, that was it. It was for this exam or something. He started laughing again. Laughing because it’s funny to know that he never understood it until now. He probably failed that assignment. He understood it now, did he ever, and he knew if he wrote it now, he would have done an excellent job.

    He continued his chuckle and moved his toes carefully and slowly over the pieces of himself, past the rug, onto the carpet, and walked back out to the couch, the beautiful, life-bearing couch, his working place, resting place, living place. His home. He sat on the cool leather as it chilled his spine and began to dig shards of the mirror out from his knuckles.