Second Campaigner Challenge: The Imago Mirror

I hope you enjoyed my first shot at the Rachel Harries' Campaigner Challenge. Now it's time for the second challenge!

This one was not an easy task... Rachel asked for a blog post of 200 words or fewer which had to include the word 'imago' in the title, and the words 'miasma', 'lacuna', 'oscitate' and 'synchronicity' in the story.

There was an added challenge to make the post exactly 200 words and to make reference to a mirror in the story... So I took all the challenges and came up with this...

There is a mirror at the back of this bar, and it is the only thing that stops me from leaving. It always stops me from leaving even though I should know better, even though the miasma is heavy, sorrowful, heart-breaking. I should go, but the mirror shows me too much, and I can’t stop looking. It fills the lacuna in my life, because it shows me my very own imago – my ideal love.

Or rather, my idealised version of love. It isn’t what I thought.

In the mirror, I do not sit alone. Next to me is a man, older than me, quite scruffy, but crinkle-eyed and wide-smiled, his tie is loose and his shirt is rumpled. He talks, he listens, he holds my hand. I can almost feel his fingers entwined in mine, the synchronicity of whatever brought us here at the same time, needing the same thing, blindsides me.

But when I turn to him, he is not there. Instead there is an oscitating emptiness.

I wonder; is there a lonely, crumpled man in another bar in another time, or world, or life, looking at me in a mirror?

I’ll have another drink and look for him.

©Lisamarie Lamb 2011