How we live our lives, who we become, how we look as each day takes its knock, it’s chip, day by day by fray.

Before bed tonight I looked in the mirror and saw someone, and I thought, "how did I come to look like this?" but I know, I was there, knock by chip.

I looked at my body and wondered what knots and eggs were inside, what bulging pulsing waiting to pop tangle of tube, what lump of loose fat was inside?

And then I caught my eyes, and there was the me I knew, the me I have always been, but the look told myself that in there, too, was debris. From a child I have been jealous and frightened, and day by day I’ve said and done little things against others, against most those most near me, petty things, near lies and near hurts, to make them smaller, and myself a little larger, but now in my eyes I see that each was a knock, a chip, each was a hurt I did myself, and now I am worn, but no larger.

I have always tried to live a good life, done right, worked from eight to five, filed taxes, sent birthday cards, baked for the sale, did for the old, voted and sat on my peers, carried insurance in the car, stopped smoking, stopped fat, clicked my belt mowed the lawn carried the trash watched the news bought the products said my prayers hated the villain cried for the children abhorred war and cheered the troops. Only now do I see what a cowardly way that was to live.

Through life I avoided the odd and the dangerous, avoided the fringe, avoided the avoided. I never did drugs never drank too long, never let strangers touch me or smear their fluids on me in sex, never drove too fast for conditions. I did not become an alcoholic, I did not die of drug overdose, did not kill innocent pedestrians; I do not have aids, do not have weeping herpes in my nerves, but still, look at me now.

No one said the most dangerous thing is life, that waking each day takes a toll, that avoiding all those terrible ends leaves only this terrible end. I did no large wrong but the gathering motes of small wrongs has left me frosted and pitted as an attic window.

The mirror spoke to me, "I’m not dead yet, what will you change?" But, I have work in the morning and still to brush and floss, and take my pills, and feed the cat, and go to bed to rest for tomorrows knock, chip.