The time came. My roommates moved out and started having kids. I stayed.
I took short walks. The neighborhood looked familiar; I had seen these houses in every season. Nothing changed, but the light moved fast. A podcast said that some people had moved to Montana, or even Hawaii.
The evenings were hard and restless. I played video games for hours. I rode to the edge of the map, searching for the invisible hill. I would forget to blink, then stumble to sleep. I read a few lines of the Purgatory before I closed my eyes, watching Dante and Virgil climb the mountain. I never remembered my dreams.
One day the sun didn’t rise. It sank in the wildfire smoke and stayed there. I drove into the city and sat behind a desk anyway. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
When I looked into her eyes, I worried.
How do you move forward in life?
Did my aunt still have my grandmother’s ring?
There were many lives across the mirror.
One of them was mine.
I took short walks. The neighborhood looked familiar; I had seen these houses in every season. Nothing changed, but the light moved fast. A podcast said that some people had moved to Montana, or even Hawaii.
The evenings were hard and restless. I played video games for hours. I rode to the edge of the map, searching for the invisible hill. I would forget to blink, then stumble to sleep. I read a few lines of the Purgatory before I closed my eyes, watching Dante and Virgil climb the mountain. I never remembered my dreams.
One day the sun didn’t rise. It sank in the wildfire smoke and stayed there. I drove into the city and sat behind a desk anyway. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
When I looked into her eyes, I worried.
How do you move forward in life?
Did my aunt still have my grandmother’s ring?
There were many lives across the mirror.
One of them was mine.