An Old Man's Reflection

Henry would sometimes stare at his reflection until he didn't recognize the face. The game reminded him of another he'd played as a boy - one that involved standing in a darkened bathroom and repeating the name of some ghost, with the rumored expectation that a monster would appear and snatch out your eyeballs.

'But whose eyeballs are these?' Henry would say to the mirror. He would stop and look at himself in the glass window of a shop, watching his figure do the same and wait there staring at him. 'She'll get your eyes,' he joked in his head, 'but only yours and never mine.'

Henry was on his way to visit his son today. He went into the shop he'd stopped in front of, and he bought a cup of coffee, which he finished "for here," having no need "to go" for another thirty minutes. He drank his morning brew and tested himself on trivia he'd remembered as a boy. "The weight of a rabbit's brain," "The year George Washington died," and so on. He'd forgotten everything.

Henry finished the drink with a shrug and went off to meet his boy. A few minutes later, he was standing before what appeared to be a much younger version of himself. The younger man was tired, but his smile had more energy than Henry could muster on his best day. Henry experienced a sense of powerlessness, like an old woman holding her thin hand out to block the sun. What a smile!

"Son, you're a sharp looking one," he said in a meek voice, praying secretly that no ghost should plot against either of them.