The Day

He slept more and more as the days drew on. He stopped shaving, convinced that he would just grow a beard, but then failed to keep that in check. He lost interest in picking up anything that happened to give way and slip in his apartment, and enjoyed the feeling of his bare feet grazing over empty carpet, like following a path to the frontier still not fully broken in. He was aware of all of this, it felt like he was aware of everything. He would stand for hours in front of his bathroom mirror, for some reason feeling a blurred sort of peace. Perhaps he was most detached there, he didn't know. Something was wrong, but he was unable even to postulate what. He ate when he was hungry, and worked his hours to pay his bills. But, in front of that mirror, he felt so much like giving up. Like if he closed his eyes one more time he would disappear back into himself. It wasn't that this thought comforted him, it terrified him. But at the same time there was this overriding sense of inevitability. And the day never came. He thought the fates were procrastinating, and wished he could somehow do what came next himself. Instead he slept, dreaming a whole new world. He would wake up and find a rough sketch from his dream the night before made in the dust on his window beside his mattress. A sky with no moon, men with wheels and wings, mountains turned upside down. Soon he began drawing when he was awake, on the fog on his mirror, on his one table, even in the dust on top of his ceiling fan. And then, almost catching him off guard, the day came. Later his sister would come to visit. She would knock, and then let herself into a world of replication, copies of somewhere else etched on every surface. And the only thing in the mirror would be a circle. Complete.