He keeps himself busy. So he doesn’t have the time to keep checking the calendar. He has refused himself the pleasure of counting the hours since she left but he cannot seem to ignore days. He knows it’s a Monday on a work heavy day, a Friday when work closes sooner than usual and so he unconsciously knows that it has been a while.
***
He can count it. Quantified, it seems like a short time. But he knows how the days have dragged and stretched out cruelly in front of him and nothing he does makes them rush by. He is happiest at night when several hours pass by without his noticing – he sleeps and before he knows it, seven hours have rushed by. He looks forward to nights greedily for not just this reason but also because he counts days only before he sleeps. 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5…
***
He wonders how people live from day to day knowing that they may never stop counting. He knows he is not one of those people. He knows she will be back. He is grateful. He wonders how life would have spread itself out thin had he not known her. How the length of time would eventually wrap and mummify him entirely and he would drown, smother, choke and die.
***
This time, it feels like a brief reminder of those days that are not his in reality. Just a glimpse, he reminds himself, so I can know and acknowledge what I have. He wonders if that is precisely how her days pass too, and he knows. They don’t. He wonders what her realisations are and immediately draws back that thought – no, he does not wish to know. Now he has one more thought to not dwell on, one more alley that he must avoid, to not think of what her learnings are lest he attract those learnings into his life.
***
He finds it odd, how he is trapped inside his own head while the winds blow free and wild through his house, carrying her scent but unable to penetrate his mind. He senses something familiar but is too far away inside his own world to notice. She wonders what his learnings are, and if he caught her wafting through the breeze.
***
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