That Was Your Life

Why the fuck are you doing this? You splash your face with the cool water halfway filling the sink, letting the droplets run down your weary face. You stand there for a while, your hands gripping the sides of the porcelain bowl, staring at your reflection in the water’s surface. You’ve been standing there for quite a while. Just standing. Standing and staring. Staring and standing. Don’t you have better things to do? Shouldn’t you be getting your work done, or going out to meet that woman, Mrs. Right-but-oh-so-wrong? Isn’t there anything else you’re going to do apart from standing at that sink, wasting your goddamn time staring at the water? But you already know the answer. You know you’d rather stand there, stay in that moment, be enraptured in your own purgatorial state rather than thrust yourself out into the world. You want time to stand still, to be lost in the moment now, to fall into your reflection on the surface of the water, rippling out of focus when the droplets strike it. Drip. Drip. Drip.