This morning is like every other. Like every other, sunlight filters through my dull-sage curtains as they ruffle in the breeze, ruffle my hair. Like every other, bird song filters too, coaxing me further into wakefulness. I’m here.

Here we go.

Follow the routine. Black coffee, buttered bread with a banana for breakfast—the bare minimum. I grew tired of the extra effort it takes to make things actually taste good long ago. I do not look at my phone when it lights up. I learned that lesson long ago, too.

Follow the routine, the routine that is so familiar by now. Brush teeth, brush hair, put on the same outfit I’ve worn every time. I’m barely present. I just have to do it and move on. I just have to get to the next thing.

I’m meeting with you today, at the park—our park, as we like to think of it. We’ve been meeting at our park since high school, and by this point we’ve found all the secret hideaways that everyone else passes by, unknowing, unwitting. But one hideaway in particular is special, ours. Our sanctum is a section of flat stone on the riverbank that requires navigating through dense undergrowth to get to, but is blissfully free of people and free of the noise of the world passing by, unknowing, unwitting, the gentle sounds of nature like a moment frozen in time. Unfortunately, I live far enough now that it takes a train ride to meet at the park. It’s worth it.

I nearly miss the train, slipping through the closing doors at the last second. As I gasp to catch my breath, the other passengers slip glances at me before returning to whatever held their attention before. Once I may have been embarrassed, slipped into some semblance of invisibility, but I stopped caring long ago. They won’t remember me anyway.

I sit in the same spot and shift my dull-sage messenger bag into my lap, settling my hands atop it. The hum and repetitive ka-chunk, ka-chunk of the train going over the rails is soothing, familiar. My body sways gently back and forth, and the little charms hanging off my bag sway too, tokens of homes no longer home. My phone lights up again, and again I shut it off. I know it’s not you, and I know I don’t need to look at it. I shouldn’t look at it. Instead, I preoccupy my mind withrunning through my script, the script I have run through so many times I no longer need to rehearse, just to have something to hold onto, just to have something to shut off my mind.

It’s a short walk from the station I get off at to the park, and I meet you just outside the entrance. We chat idly about nothing as we go, meandering through the paved paths until we reach the dirt ones, meandering towards our sanctum. I keep preventing myself from muttering your words under my breath before you say them, the rhythm of the conversation so predictable. I point out a beautiful tree embraced by dull-sage vines a second before you would have, just to see the smile light up your face, just to prove our connection to nobody but myself. Just to get you to see the beauty that exists here.

We’re in our sanctum and I’m sweating. It’s a pleasant day with a pleasant breeze, but I would be sweating even if it was frigid. As we sit on the smooth warm stone, I focus on the sound of the dull-sage river, endless and rushing, to calm my heartbeat. You’ve gone quiet too, and I hope maybe this time it won’t happen. But I should know better than to hope.

“Hey, actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…”

No. I know how this goes. This is how it always goes. It cannot go this way. Do it again.

***

This morning is like every other. Blinding sun and stealing wind, wind that steals any heat from me, crowing birds that pierce my brain. I’m here. Again.

I force myself out of bed and drink my same bland, tasteless coffee, my same bland, tasteless breakfast, the same bland, mindless routine I have to tolerate again and again and again. And I’m just so tired. I’m tired of being in this endless loop, tired of doing everything I can to change the inevitable, tired of feeling this desperate. But I know I cannot allow you to go through with it. I know I will do it again.

Perhaps because I’m so tired, I look at my phone when it lights up—something I haven’t done in many loops. My mother’s name on my screen shoves a knife through my gut, even year after year, loop after loop—a knife sharpened by bittersweet hope, bittersweet yearning—sweet hope and yearning made bitter by years of apathy and silence. Years of phone calls sent to voicemail until I learned better. She’s asking if we can meet. It’s the seventh grey text block in a row. I don’t respond.

I nearly miss the train, slipping through the closing doors at the last second again. I thump my forehead against the closed doors, staying there until one of the train staff gently asks me to move, would you please, it’s dangerous. I consider telling her the train could suck me under its wheels for all I care. I almost do, knowing she won’t remember, but I don’t have the energy.

I sit in the same spot, the same damn spot I always sit. I stare straight across, straight through the window opposite me, staring at the scenery speeding by. Towering buildings speed past, the concrete bars of my home for the past few years. Home after home after home. I wonder how many more homes will be stolen from me. As the towering buildings thin and turn into rolling hills and quaint houses speckling the scenery, I am reminded why I usually avoid staring outside. Memory floods me as fast as the scenery speeds by. Memory of arguments through thin walls. Memory of moving here, to these rolling hills, with my father and my father alone. Memory of phone calls sent to voicemail. Memory of meeting you, vibrant where I was dull, timber I could rely on, roots I could fall back on.

My phone lights up with two more texts from my mother. These ones only say please and I’m sorry. I think of the phone calls sent to voicemail, I think of how young I was, I think of the bottles my father would try to hide from me. My fingers hover over the keys, adrenaline roaring out the hum and ker-chunk of the train. You would not remember anything I say here. I could say anything here.

I put my phone away.

We meet outside the park again and this time I feel spurred by energy I had lacked for the rest of this loop—spurred, perhaps, by the texts from my mother, from my desperate desire to not go through it again, from my desperate desire to hold on tight. I barely let you get a word in the entire walk. I tell you about my week, utterly made up, tell you about the made up opportunities you’d love to take advantage of in my city, pointing out every single tree and every single flower,look, aren’t they pretty, isn’t it so nice here, wouldn’t you never want to be anywhere else? You’re quiet the whole time. I know you can tell something is wrong. I know I could never tell you the truth because the truth would make you want to run away even more.

We don’t make it to our sanctum. You stop me when we’re almost there and when you open your mouth I know what you’re going to say and I cannot handle it I cannot hear it I cannot DO IT AGAIN!

***

I have become so rehearsed in this now. How could I not, when I am forced through it over

and over, faced with the same day and the same terrifying, dreadful, inevitable conversation again and again? I have been rehearsing for so long that it comes naturally, more naturally than breathing. Day in and day out, same day in and same day out, I pretend, pretend, pretend, unsure if I’m even pretending anymore. How do I stop? How do I want to stop?

I have gone through every possible variation of this day. I try not going to meet up at all, pretending to be sick, but you text me the news anyway. I try blocking you and ignoring you, but you send me a letter. I go and I beg and I plead and I cry, but nothing ever works. I even threaten you once, but I feel so sick I scrap the loop anyway. As much as I want to be out of this hellish repetition, I want you to stay even more, so for as long as it takes I will

DOITAGAINDOITAGAINDOITAGAINDOITAGAINDOITAGAIN

***

This morning is like every other. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. At first I think this

might be a loop where I lay in bed all day and you show up at my door and tell me there, in the dim, flickering light of the bulb in the hallway. I think of the mother who lost me in the divorce, who neglected to try afterward. I think of the father who lost himself in his grief, who drank himself into oblivion afterward. I think of all the people who left me, people who I loved and who I needed, and I think of you. Timber. Roots.

I make my coffee and add some cream. I make my toast and scrape on some peanut butter. I sit and stare out the window as I eat, at a pair of birds who flit around each other before one bird flits off, out of sight. A few minutes later the bird flits back—or maybe it’s a different bird altogether. You were always better at birdwatching.

I text my mother an agreement to meet.

I do miss the train this time. It was an accident, not even a ploy to drag this day on longer. I let you know in an apology text and turn off my phone. I sit and people-watch while I wait, noting the well-dressed business men who curse when they realize they missed the train, noting the mother who bounces her sleeping toddler, noting the elderly individual who hums to themself a few benches away. I note how these people’s days will go on even though they missed the train.

When I see you smiling and waving at me from the park entrance I think my heart breaks. It never broke before. I would get anxious, or sad, or desperate, or even angry, but nothing so final as a break. We meander through the park and I listen to you talk, listen to you point out the trees first, listening while smiling and nodding. I feel more present this time than anytime before, even more than the first time. My resolve hardens with each step; my mind clears with each step. I clung so hard because I was afraid of being abandoned again. But vines only strangle the trees they cling to.

We’re in our sanctum. We listen to the leaves shift in the wind and the birds sing overhead. I know exactly the pattern of your breaths before you open your mouth to speak the words I’ve been avoiding all this time.

“Hey, actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…”

“I know.” I smile, and tears well up in my eyes. “I’ve known for a while. You can go.” You take my hands in yours with a distraught expression. You look more upset than I do.

I suppose I’ve had more time to process. “I was so worried, I didn’t want to do it without telling you… I don’t want to be another person who left you. I know you need me and I’ve always been happy to be here for you, but… I need to go. I’m sorry. I promise we’ll keep in touch, and I won’t be far! We can still make time to visit,” you say, and I let you, because I know you’re saying it for yourself as much as you’re saying it for me.

“I’m really happy for you,” I tell you, and I find that it’s true. “I’ll be okay.”

We listen to the sound of the sage river, ever rushing, ever changing, ever moving forward.