There was a man who did not love himself. His face, his hands, and each of his eyes, he would look at in the mirror right as he got out of bed, but nope, no love could he find. And this went on for so long, his hunt for love in every crease of himself, that soon he grew tired of this game. If no love is in these pits, he would say, with his arm to the sky and his nose buried in the pit, and no love is between these toes as he looked down and spread apart each toe one at a time hoping that love would give up the game and come out – if love is not here then where?

He opened the door to his oven and looked inside, but it smelt burnt and something dripped and he recoiled from the loveless place. In his bathroom he found two mirrors and in these he thought he saw something that might be love but it was his own back and he frowned. When Sunday came, he did his weekly clean of the flat, but every so often would take an extra long glance in all the nooks and holes he wiped and dusted, a lingering hope in his face that vanished quick like a pebble in a sea.

On his way to work one day, he was in such loveless loss that he took to new measures. A child passed him by, on the way to the park perhaps, and he asked, “Do you love yourself?” The child exclaimed how much it liked chocolate chip ice cream and then was ushered on by her mother.

“Do you love yourself?” said the man to a twosome of crows as they selected pieces from a dead rabbit. One cocked its eye as if through it it could hear the man’s words. The second one then bellowed because it was chocking, which frightened the first one and in turn made the second one fright also. Both flew for a few seconds and perched on a brick wall.

“Do you love yourself?”

“I love,” said the bank teller, then hesitated before finishing, “my work! Yes! I love my customers, each bring me great joy. Yes!”

The old man started to ask again about the bank teller’s love for themselves but they passed him his cheque and called the next person forward. On his way out he held the door for a greyhound, and asked it the same as the rest. The dog yapped because the shape of someone in the lobby was not to its liking.

On the way back home, the old man took to asking the sky, which was under siege by spotted clouds. One cloud looked very much like the front half of a tortoise. Or a leaf?

At home, the kettle threw so much out of it while it boiled that the man hardly made half a cup that afternoon. But he was to occupied with the responses on his typewriter for this to concern him. All afternoon he had typed the letters “D O Y O U L O V E Y O U R S E L F” so that he now had six pages and one more nearly there. When he was done, he stepped back, the pages strewn about each other on his desk like an autumn display. He took a nod. Then nodded another. Then he really started some deliberate up and downs of the head. His face smiled and then his face cracked right in two with a great grin. No one played any music within ten miles, but the old man’s head bobbed like he was in a late night jazz concert.

And he began to sing:

“DOYO! ULO! YOUR ELF!”

“O YOU? LEY OURSELF!”

“ D-D-D-D, LOVVVERRR!”

“V-V-V-V, LOSSSSERRR!”

His two hands clapped like they’d been build for drums and he took his whole flat for a tango dance, explore each room, danced with the curtains and the bed sheets and this went for hours until the sun started to set. And in the final room, as he executed a strong boogey to the window, he passed a mirror and froze and the music left him like a hosepipe. A shake came from his smallest finger and it became a tremble that demanded to be let loose. He ran to that mirror and gripped both sides like the wheel of a car and put his face to within a nose of the reflection. So much water was in his eyes that his vision was clogged. He made out a few features, but he couldn’t identify the reflection before him, but he didn’t need to. His grin was so wide it passed around the mirror making to embrace it. He took his mouth and pulled it in tight into a little button on his face, lent forward, and kissed.