I can’t stand them; they look back at me as I walk past them in the sunlight on my way to the coffee shop. The tops of glass tables

photo credit: jeffedoe

are a bane to mankind because they reveal the inner soul of the person looking into them. In that way, they are just like the mirror in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. That’s not to say that I am in any danger of dissolving into a puddle of decadence, but more often than not I am suffering a violent hangover threatening to end in derangement or death. This journey, then, past the mirrored surfaces of the glass tables etches in sharp relief my struggles with my inability to finish my novel, and my efforts to seek relief for this writer’ block in the bottom of a liquor bottle.