The morning light spilled lazily through the slats of the bathroom window, its pale fingers brushing across the sink, the tiles, and finally—him. He stood there, unmoving, a ghost caught in daylight, eyes fixed on the man staring back from the mirror.
Button by button, he closed his shirt. The cotton resisted slightly—unlike before—brushing against a stomach that had grown quietly over the years. There was no shame in that, he thought. Only… a pause. A recognition. As if life had exchanged his speed for gravity.
Square glasses framed his face now. A beard, peppered with gray like salt scattered across old wood, masked what used to be a clean jawline. His hairline had long begun its slow retreat — a silent surrender — and even the few survivors on top clung desperately like forgotten flags on an abandoned battlefield.
And yet, the mirror didn’t show him.
It showed himself — not now, but then.
A boy of twenty, full of sun and wind and carelessness. His hair was long, black, pulled into a ponytail like a young warrior, with loose locks hanging rebelliously over his brow. His face bore no lines, no shadows, only that radiant, defiant confidence that time had not yet negotiated. No glasses. No beard. Just joy. Raw, unfiltered joy.
He was smiling — broadly, triumphantly. As if nothing in the world could touch him.
And the man — the present one — stared in return. Silently.
They did not speak. They didn’t need to.
He walked out of the bathroom like a stranger in his own skin.
The house was quiet. Too quiet. Once, it had echoed with music and friends and late-night laughter. Now, it barely breathed. Just a ceiling fan creaking overhead, like an old man clearing his throat but forgetting what he was about to say.
He made coffee with automatic hands. Bitter. Strong. Like how he used to pretend to like it in college, only now—he truly did.
Each sip was a ritual. A mourning. A slow unraveling.
His mind floated back to evenings under banyan trees with friends who called him “firebrand,” back to debates that ended in belly-laughter, to dreams scrawled on hostel walls with chalk and cigarette ash. Back to days when he didn’t fear the passing of time—because time was still his friend.
But now, time was a debt collector. Always standing just outside the door.
The real tragedy, he realized, was not in aging. It was in awareness.
Aging is natural. But knowing you’ve aged — that hits differently. That sits inside your chest like wet cotton and weighs you down with a question:
“Where did it all go?”
He still remembered that night — two decades ago — when he ran three kilometers through the rain just to tell someone he loved her. He still remembered how alive he felt, heart pounding not from the sprint, but from the meaning of it all.
He remembered everything.
And now? He took the elevator to the first floor because his knees made strange noises. He rubbed balm on his neck and squinted at prescription labels. He worried about calcium. About sugar. About things he once dismissed with a wave of a muscular, tanned arm.
That boy in the mirror — the one with sparkling eyes — had no idea what was coming.
There was no tragedy as quiet and universal as the soft decrescendo of human energy.
It didn’t come like a thief. It came like dust — settling, imperceptibly, until one day you realized the color of your world had dimmed.
It didn’t happen because you stopped running. It happened because you started remembering running.
He wanted to go back. Oh, how he wanted to go back.
Not to change anything.
Just… to be there again.
To feel that warmth in his bones. That arrogance. That immortality.
To laugh without consequence.
To wake up without aches.
But mirrors only show. They don’t transport.
And that was the cruelty of memory.
It gave you everything — sights, sounds, even smells — but it locked the doors to return. You could see your past self smile, but you couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t even warn him.
He wanted to say:
“Don’t take it for granted.”
“Please, take better care of us.”
“Call your parents more often.”
“Don’t lose yourself proving things to people who never mattered.”
But the boy was smiling — untouched, unaffected — as if none of the future mattered.
And maybe that was right.
Maybe life wasn’t meant to be lived with caution.
Maybe it had to be lived in flame and folly, or not at all.
That afternoon, he skipped lunch.
He stood at the edge of the terrace, watching birds loop against a sky that hadn’t aged a day. Somewhere down the road, he saw a young couple laughing over tea, legs swinging from a ledge, unaware that their youth was singing its swan song even now.
He didn’t resent them.
But he did envy them.
He didn’t want their lives.
He just wanted his own, back.
By evening, something inside him shifted.
Not dramatically. Not like an epiphany. Just… a quiet click. Like a door closing gently behind you.
He looked at the mirror once more.
The boy was still there. Still smiling. But this time, the man nodded — slowly, softly.
Not in approval. Not in defeat. Just in acknowledgment.
“Yes,” he seemed to say.
“I remember you. I miss you. I wish I could be you again.”
“But I am not. And that’s okay.”
Because that boy had no idea what it meant to stand still and endure.
To lose things. People. Places. Possibilities.
To keep walking anyway.
He picked up his pen — an old one, rusted at the clip — and opened a forgotten notebook. The pages were yellow, brittle at the edges.
On the first blank sheet, he wrote:
“I am not who I was.
But I am still here.
And as long as I’m here,
I’ll keep buttoning up my shirt,
one day at a time.”
Then he smiled — not broadly, not brightly. But with peace.
And the boy in the mirror?
He smiled back.