The Mirror

she starts the day with a pot of turmeric tea. it steams up the window. a half-arsed apology to the liver after the whisky kicked it to pieces all night. outside, the Greenock rain drives straight into the tar.

another Sunday.

at the table, she thinks about the mirror from the local paper.

ten quid. collection only.

set in a mahogany frame. heavy as a coffin lid. the bloke selling it, Franklyn, used to be a doctor. she knew him. his surgery sat in the middle of town like a rotten tooth. she used to ride the bus there through streets that smelled of wet dog. everybody on the bus looked like they’d lost a bet.

sometimes he wore a deerstalker hat. pretentious bastard. his waiting room had a painting over the fireplace. seventy years of damp eating the canvas. green mould blooming across some aristocrat with a shotgun and dead pheasants. the birds looked like they were rotting right out of the frame.

that mirror had watched too many faces. her old man included. that was the hitch. she pictured it hanging in the hallway. every time she staggered past with vomit on her sleeve and the morning shakes rattling her knees. he’d be there. staring out from the glass. bloodshot eyes. a dead-man grin.

Franklyn was the one who signed the old bastard out when the skin finally gave up. wrote liver failure on the certificate. he died later that year. one day somebody will do the same for her. nod. scribble a script. pocket the fee.

she never rang about the advert.

she’s got enough ghosts without paying ten quid for another one. inside her, the liver is just a hot brick under the ribs. a lump of gristle that can’t clean the blood anymore. she sits and waits for the phone to ring before the yellow in her eyes turns to rot.

top of the list or bottom of the queue.

the phone stays silent.
waiting for a dead man’s part,
the liver, the queue.