Unknown

You look in the mirror and someone else is there.

It’s past sun down, and the winter’s too brutal to run outside. With the neighbours away on holiday, yelling won’t help either.

But you needn’t worry; the face doesn’t want to rip your eyes out. It just looks on.

Dark pupils enveloped in pale pink ovals. Deep in hollowed holes on a stretched parchment of ligament.

It blinks. Slowly, deliberately as if every tiny movement of tissue required as much effort as tearing away the label on a jam jar. Its nostrils flare as a long sigh escapes its nose, the tiny gash on the side streaming with renewed stream of blood. Eyebrows, as autumn leaves in winter, slimmed from being tugged at for months, arch over the holes, judgemental. 

Aged cuts like packed sliced bread, scream in silent pain from along its jaws. Dry, parched, and unattended, every slit, pore, and black spot yearns for a cure, pleads to you.

Hair once plush, pride worthy, had taken many a stride back, leaving in its wake a receding hairline whose dandruff peeks, mocks you.

It’s not your face anymore. 

You look around the house.

His books.

His furniture.

His favourite table cloth.

His choice of food.

His belts, his bottles, his smell…even on you.

It’s not your home anymore.