Fog

Do you like yourself? Or, rather, do you hold yourself, let’s say as an out-of-body person with hidden thoughts but demonstrable behaviour, in good regard? Would you want to sit across from yourself on the bus, both of you riding into work as the late February sun splashes in a sweet but unremarkable way out across the water, the view of which one of you can see but maybe the other can’t, maybe one is instead plugged between pillowcase headphones or soaking in idle time quiet as moss? Would you want to be in your own presence for a stumbled moment: just long enough to notice an interesting wrinkle or to question a choice of apparel? Could you go as far as to have a conversation? Would the voice of you reaching out into your space have something to say, something that would make you think for a little bit more than you expected you would, or do you think it’d be more like keeping the trees dry in a rainstorm? Would you have anything to say at all? Would you want to befriend yourself in a happenstance way where the two of you like leaves flutter forth from opposite ends of the park just to land in the lap of a reading babysitter, who has spans of time to allow pleasantries to be exchanged, companionships to be conspired? Swinging interlaced hands at the end of the afternoon. Maybe it would be harder, somewhat jagged at the seams where you and yourself are conjoined; but with benevolence and patience could you find the sewing kit to knick the threads at these places, to make decided stitches and knots at your leisure, as the good grace of time plays itself to mute and each of you grows fond of either canted reflection. Perhaps not, though, not ever. You might hate the sores on your body where they so obviously bleed through the cotton, hate the boorish banter you project in splintered verse. You might see yourself anew and sadistically so, no glass panel to bewitch your brain which houses lenses on every floor, and want in the end in equal quantities to vandalize the figure before you, and to hide from it. Maybe that’s why you’re outside of yourself in the first place: to maim, to reject. Phantoms leering at the portraits in the hall.

Do you like yourself, as you are? If you do, would one of yourself be so kind as to elucidate the method.