Portrait of a Stranger

I caught my reflection in a shop window this afternoon and did not recognise the man looking back. Not for three full seconds. He seemed older than I thought I was. He held his bag the way my father used to, slightly too low, slightly too tightly. These discontinuities accumulate. You reach a certain age and the mirror begins showing you someone else's past. The face you carry in your mind is always younger than the face you wear. I wonder, sometimes, which version is the accurate one.