In the Late-Night Mirror

Wallpaper begins to peel
back at the corners of the
room, these garish patterns
now undermined by time,
stained, with condensation
runs down the wall because
of the single pane windows
there was never enough
money to improve,

And this good, thick linoleum
still bears up under the slow
tread of the few who remain,
worn down so that it will never
take a wax and shine as it
did, but still better than bare
board, and kept as clean as
the joints in Mary’s elbows
will stand, and apart from
those weeks when her back
feels like deep needles are
being pushed, hot and poisoned,
into the bones and muscle,
she runs the mop across to
wash it,

And James squints his eyes,
laying hand to heart in an
unknowing gesture, that
nervous tick he’s picked up
since the second heart attack,
the bad one, and he sits back
from the morning paper he
can hardly stand to read,
lamenting the burnt place up
the wall where Mary forgot
to turn off the flame last year,
and he reaches almost the level
of smiling to himself over her
protestation that it was him,
though he’s never cooked anything
more complex than a bacon sandwich
in a solid thirty years, and those only
on the days she goes out to do her
volunteer work each Wednesday,

And he’s unaware of the smell, that
old house smell, that scent of old
people growing stationary and
inert one day upon the other, that
mélange of stale cigarettes from
the habit Mary can’t quite kick,
those long, thin More 120s, and
onions, and cinnamon and overcooked
coffee, and tissue breaking down,
DNA strands fraying at the edges,
muscle and bone cooking down to
their constituent parts,

And it’s only late in the evenings,
after the television programs are
over, and the cars with the loud
music have stopped going by
this old house that used to be
so silent on a street so little used
that children could play games
on the tarmac—it’s only when
the evening’s stealthy progress
has muted the surface sounds
and daily minutia that these
unwholesome wisdoms become
clear,

And as James looks at
Mary, so much a different
person to the one he knew
as a boy, and the wrinkled
skin hiding that thin, hard
veneer of dignity that keeps
tears from her eyes when
the arthritis hurts her so
badly, he can see the
reflections of death in
her eyes, liver spots like
holes in the universe,
like dry rot inside the
boards of the house they’ve
lived in and seen children
come and go, seen them
grow into late adulthood
themselves,

And she can tell he sees it,
and she moves as quick
as her bad hips will allow,
not wanting to see it, and
she sits by the window,
between the dusty sewing
machine and the clothes
hamper, next to the window
she cracks open despite the
cold, and with unsteady hands,
she fishes in her cigarette purse
and lights one, holding it
next to the bottom of the
window so the smoke will exit,

So James doesn’t watch her
as she does this, gripping her
habit like a talisman against
that look in his eyes, and
he goes to the mirror, his
evening beard growth now
all salt and not a single kernel
of pepper, and death lingers
in the gleam of his own
myopic eyes when he draws
the glasses down his nose to
look,

But he doesn’t look long and
focuses on other things altogether,
like what they’ll need from the
supermarket come Friday, and
if he’s had the oil changed in the
Buick, and when his next trip
to the Veteran’s hospital to see
the doctor who never remembers
his name might be.

James picks up the mouthwash and
moves it over his few remaining
real teeth, pulling the fake ones
out and setting them in the jar
with the Efferdent, and before
he’s tempted to meet his own
eyes in the mirror once more,
he flicks the lights off and
closes the bathroom door tight,

And he stands in the hall, thinking
of calling out to his wife to ask if she’s
coming to bed, but the way her back
is held, the movement of old age palsy
dancing the flame of her smoke around
in the gloom near the window—these things
forswear him somehow, and he walks to
the bed alone.

James draws back the covers and considers
the fact that he no longer wonders what
life is for, or why he’s here, even though
no solid answers have ever satisfied,
but he doesn’t consider it very long,
because his night clothes don’t warm him
as they used to, and he lies on his back,
covered by the heavy bedding, as if
covered by soil, and remembers the days
when he saw only himself in the mirror,
not the quickling shadow of his own
ghost trying to escape the sinking
vessel of his flesh, remembers what
Mary’s smooth skin felt like the
first time he dared enough to slide
his work-calloused hand inside
her bright sweater and along the
angle of her lower back, and
that memory brings little enough
solace now, but it slowly leads
him down the tricky path to sleep.

By the time Mary nerves herself
up to face him, or anyone, and
blunts out her smoke, he is long,
long gone.