I am essential for the plot yet nowhere in the story, the one loved most by those that live for words at play. Riddle me this: What is the mirror’s image? Maybe I’m the reflection within the glass instead, thin as light, waiting for this existence I enjoy so very well, the face twisted to contemplate itself (What stares back?) Where does all the pretty go when the beholder closes their eye? Riddle me this, Boy Wonder: She loves coffee; she hates tea. What a giveaway! Then again, I delight in being an E. Nigma to myself, the box inside the box and always black. I am the something no one wants to have and no one wants to lose: the answer to that one is still waiting to be called before the bench. Catch me. Riddle me this, wannabe hero: I am cat in the morning, bird in the afternoon, grinning demon balanced on its tail in the pale moonlight (who among all villains can lay claim to that?) Every mythology needs its Echo, voice and no body, mockery in its clearest form, agreed? Call me Raven, Jack Daw, Tanatalizer. For all the right reasons, everyone remembers my manic giggle best.

© Richard Harrison
image by Emma Rouleau