Parallel

Here in the shadowbox everything is reflected...but so...I like to keep my back to the ledge because sometimes I get that vertigo thing, you know, really bad.  

Hard part is though just having the mirror to look into.  Only that.

Because it's me in there.  

I mean I can see me but I wonder what's going on beyond the corners, you know behind the other me.  I don't think it's always the same as here, you know, on THIS side of the mirror.  I suspect it isn't.

Sometimes I feel like I catch little wisps of smoke coming from back there.  Or a shadow from around the curve.  Which just then calls into question the "ME" part of the reflection too.  You know, because if anything is different then EVERYTHING must be different.  

Or, how do I know that what I'm seeing right here in front of me is really me and not just some prop, some elaborate deception?  I don't, that's how.  

Maybe there's another me--the one who propped up the fake me on his side of the mirror so he could do something different--and maybe he's having a lot better time of it all.  Maybe that me has the grace unlike THIS me, the real one (at least to me), to not press his face so hard against the mirror and to just go ahead and walk the path along the edge and see what else life has in store--"fuck the vertigo," he might say.

I watch him sometimes and I think--maybe I imagine--I see him peel his face off from the other side of the mirror against mine and then circle around behind me.  I can't move so I have to crane my eyes around in their sockets.  I feel them darting around in there, my eyes I mean and that makes me panic.  I must look panicked with my eyes darting around but then it's also worse because you know your eyes can only really move just a little bit.  

I'm not like a cow who apparently has like 360-degrees of peripheral vision.  Or at least something approaching that.  That according to something I read somewhere in an article about meat.  

It's strange to read something about "meat" and only really retain the one fact about eyes.  And a cow's eyes to boot.  

I still can't move.  Not until he comes back.  It's like we can't BOTH be flouting convention.  One of us has to keep the faith, carry the torch.

Eat shit--at least ONE of us has to.

SO I have to stand here waiting until he comes back from whatever fun he's off having.  HE'S the lucky one--the other me is.  HE gets to have all the fun.  Well I'll be here when he gets back and we're going to have a word or two, let me tell you....