This afternoon at half-past three

I saw myself as I made tea

Through the bright, distinctive bend

Of a coffee spoon’s back end.

The word I use is not ‘reflection’

Rather some kind of projection

Of a person yet to blossom

Like a cracking boll of cotton.

Grinning, silver-gilded through

The cutlery— as spectres do—

Appeared myself at fifty-five

Devoid of life but quite alive.

My contemporary body

(The corporeal and un-contorted)

Shuddered at the impure image

Of this frightful, fated visage.

Why should I start, if such a face

Would— in two scores— be commonplace?

Has he not lived my lives foreseen?

Do I not yearn for where he’s been?

Through the flatware, our fates merging

All his history’s roads diverging

Avenues of self-expression,

Glamour; lust— tasteful obsession.

I marvelled at his paths’ pearlescence

All potential gains and lessons

Before me, slews of selves refracting

To prismatic smithereens.

Perhaps I would be better suited

To a life seated and suited.

Thoughts on tap but thinking muted—

Madcap dreams left spayed and neutered.