The scene was was flat. A static display of exposition. I’d turned off the screen moments ago and stared uncontent knitted brows at the black television. Light beamed into the room, reflecting off the mirror in the bedroom, through two doorways and lighting a perfect rectangular blemish of eternity in the middle right of the blank emptiness.

She used to stand in that mirror and look at herself. Clutch parts of herself, wishing to be fuller. My own ‘little narcissus’ I would call her. She’d prickle at that and react, disproving my jest. She cared about me and what I said, she did.

The sun was at a perfect angle to bounce off one surface, onto the next and blind me. It was a small joy, an uncomfortable and unique moment which I looked for whenever I was on a hill with the sun shining brightly above. I was the child that reflected sunlight into friends eyes in class on summer days. I would later put the high beams on, while driving drunk one night and cause a family accident as they came down the mountain. It was a part of the Australian identity of youth. Sportsman, larakin, hero, legend. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Each time I would turn the high beams on, 50 meters and closing. Then switch them off completely. The roads were always wet at that altitude, I was drinking whiskey or rum with a friend because of his unrequited love. I remember his bad teeth, ‘the closest artery to the heart run by the teeth’ I was once told.

Now I know to watch out for those with bad teeth, they are the crippled and decrepet lovers that hold back feelings, flare with false emotions and intervene into the lives of others. I think he’d grabbed the wheel as a joke. We butted them enough to send them down the bank, bull-bar, dashboard, glass and a scream. We drove on, not speaking. He’s happy these days, those memories are more colour than anything pure. The wind blew the trees out the front of the house. Leave flitted across the path of the sun and the mirror tickled with darkness and then choked like it was trying to send an SOS. I broke from my trance, the screen was black again. I chewed the inside of my cheek, a tiny piece of skin had some loose and now teased by teeth to bite it, like the long ends of a sea anemone. Salt ran down my face by my mouth. The fireplace groaned and sighed with the breeze. I bit down on the tiny piece of myself that had come loose and swallowed it.