Routine
Every day begins the same.
5:00 a.m. sharp. The alarm pierces the darkness, jagged and insistent, like the shrill cry of a creature caught helplessly in a trap. I wake with a start, my body tense, muscles aching from yesterday’s run, my legs stiff and knotted. Every fiber of my being screams for rest, but I push the feeling aside. My running clothes wait neatly folded on the chair, the gray fabric smelling faintly of detergent and residual sweat. I slip into them, snug and familiar. The laces of my shoes bite into my fingers as I tie them tight, a ritual of preparation, a quiet promise that the day will be just as it always is.
Outside, the air is cold, sharp, carrying with it the faint smell of frost and damp earth. The streets are silent of people. Almost unnaturally so. I hear the rustle of leaves, the whisper of wind curling through alleyways, the distant hum of a car somewhere on a street I do not recognize but know intimately. And always, the subtle clink of a street sign swaying in the breeze—soft, metallic, inevitable.
Two miles to Mill Park. Two miles back. Home. Shower. Dress. Drive 4.3 miles to Heaven in a Cup for the double espresso that will kick my heart into normal rhythm. Then the last 9.7 miles to the office, where the fluorescent lights buzz overhead, the cubicles are gray, neat, sterile, and I pass Kevin on the fourth floor, nod, small talk that tastes like ash in my mouth, and return to the endless grind.
Evenings follow the same pattern. After work, after the second obligatory nod to Kevin and the avoidance of anyone else, I get into my car. I drive away, aware of the rhythm of the tires on the asphalt, the smell of exhaust and wet pavement. I stop at one of three places for dinner, Quick & Go for gas, and an occasional candy bar or soda. Then home, change back into my running clothes, and jog 3.2 miles to River Bend Estates and 3.2 miles back. Shower. Eat. Sink into the couch. Netflix. The news. Bed.
Then wake just to do it all over again.
Every. Single. Day.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
And every day, without fail, I see her.
Always there.
Average height. Brunette. Curvaceous, but in a way that is unremarkable until you truly begin to notice her, until her eyes draw you in. Those green eyes, the impossible shade of green, like moss glinting in sunlight, piercing and watching. They assure me it is her. Always her.
Without them, she would disappear into the crowd. Another face. Another shadow. Another stranger, in the endless ebbing and flowing sea of people. But no—those eyes insist I see her. They demand it. They shine like beacons, pulling me closer, tugging at something in me I cannot name, something buried beneath the monotony, beneath the empty ritual of repetition that is my life.
She is everywhere. The locations change, the clothes change, the time of day, the circumstances. But she is there. Sometimes she waits in line for coffee, fingers tapping a rhythm on the counter I can’t quite place. Sometimes she runs past me in Mill Park, her shoes barely touching the gravel path, hair whipping behind her, ephemeral. She has been beside me at a red light, a pedestrian crossing in front of my car, and each encounter is fleeting, spectral, like a cameo in a Hitchcock film.
She has became my real life Waldo, often hidden, often obscured, but no less my constant. The only thing I can truly rely on to break the constant monotony of my world.
