Ego

Have you ever stared into the mirror for so long that the face in front of you begins to lose all meaning? A blank pair of eyes and that same tired nose, the one you wish you could rub out and redraw, those same dirty old lips that have committed atrocities, all the same old faces, resentment, bitterness, tiredness, all pouring out at once onto a blank canvas burning before your eyes.

It is not without fear that I take a step away from the mirror and enter another room, where more memories flood inwards, into my eyes and over that rickety shell I call my bones. It is with a sense of dread that I turn away, worried that if I do not continue to stare, do not continue to keep an eye on it, that face may wane, and vanish, disappearing into the void, turning the light out as it leaves, and I alone, no, not alone. Not even myself for company any longer, just the murky white sheets and the pillows, and the dark.

That face scares me shitless. It bares the scars of every crime I have ever committed, every lie ever told, and every squandered opportunity, and cunt stuffed with more ego than love. There in that mirror is everything I hate about myself, magnified, and intensified, and left hanging there while I gawk and rearrange my hair hoping to wash it all away, hoping to throw all the beady eyed fuckers in the bin with the stray hairs on my comb.

It is not enough to regret, not enough to wish for more, not enough to just sit and sip tea while the crowds linger outside, talking about all sorts of exciting things. I do not want to regret - I want to erase, scrub away at the flesh until all the vile grot inside pours out onto the linoleum and bleeds out into the carpet, with the coffee stains from that evening that I hated, the evening where I wanted to panic and throw my legs over the window ledge and pull hard on the curtain for balance, before spilling the coffee and having to clean it up.

Coffee does not come out of the rug all that easily. It works its way deep into the fibres, into the sinews, into the flesh of the rug, and there it remains, showing still, twenty years later when your next bang comes round and you remark Oh, it's a pity about the carpet.

All those coffee stains on my face are there and when the next bang comes round I remark Oh, that's just a fat wannabe. Don't mind him.