Every morning, Kofi woke up with a sigh that felt older than his years. His phone was the first thing his hand reached for, not because he wanted to, but because stopping felt harder. As he scrolled, his chest tightened in ways he couldn’t explain. Faces he knew. Names he remembered from roll call. People who once borrowed pens from him were now boarding planes, standing beside new houses, and smiling into futures that looked finished.
He told himself he was happy for them. Sometimes that was true. Other times, it was a lie he repeated until it sounded polite.
Soon, he began to measure himself in quiet ways. His job didn’t sound impressive when he said it out loud. His clothes felt too ordinary. Even his smile looked borrowed, like something he wore for other people. He stopped laughing freely because, somewhere along the way, laughter started to feel like a performance.
The mirror in his room didn’t help. It caught him on bad mornings, with tired eyes, shoulders bent forward, and a body that seemed to apologise for taking up space. Some days he turned his face away from it. Other days, he stared too long, hoping it might show him a version of himself that had already “arrived”.
One evening, his grandmother found him sitting on the veranda. The sky was changing colours, but Kofi barely noticed. His phone lay beside him, screen dark. She eased herself into the chair next to his, joints complaining softly. For a while, neither of them spoke. The kind of silence that isn’t empty, just patient.
Then she said, almost to herself,
“You know… mirrors can lie.”
Kofi let out a small, tired laugh. “Mirrors only show the truth, Grandma.”
She shook her head slowly. “They show what you’re ready to see. Nothing more.”
She told him about two men who planted seeds on the same day. One seed sprouted early and was praised. The other stayed hidden, growing roots underground where no one clapped. “But when the storms came,” she said, “only one of them stood.”
Her words didn’t fix anything right away. They didn’t erase the envy or quiet the ache. But something shifted. Just a little.
That night, Kofi stood in front of the mirror again. He noticed things he usually rushed past: the faint scar on his chin and the way his eyes still carried hope even when he was tired. He didn’t suddenly love what he saw. But he didn’t look away either.
The mirror hadn’t changed.
And maybe Kofi hadn’t, not yet.
But for the first time in a long while, he understood this: his life was not late. It was not behind. It was simply unfolding in a way that couldn’t be filtered or posted or compared.
And that was enough, for now.
