I went into the entryway of a house and looked at my face.
And then I knew I shouldn’t have.
The mirror shouldn’t have been used to show me my image.
I should have used it instead to reflect sunlight onto the cracked walls of my room.
Because at that moment I saw for the first time what Josef Roubicek looked like,
and it was not a nice sight.
I saw shrunken cheeks, with a large nose protruding between them;
I saw two deep furrows painfully framing a mouth;
I saw grayish skin, a wrinkled forehead, and sunken eyes behind glasses.
This was getting me nowhere, being able to look at my face on my birthday.
There was nothing in it for me.
I shouldn’t have looked forward to it, nor should I have bought the mirror.
I had no need for it.
It slipped from my hand and broke into a hundred pieces on the tiled floor.
I left the house without even looking back at the slivers,
and then I began to laugh at myself, at my vanity and longing.
No, this was not the way back to life.
– Jiří Weil –
