Radiator knocks at 5:41. Fourteenth of October. Larch Street. Ellis has a walnut table to finish. Tax bill stays sealed. He sits the building while Lena is at the clinic. Same Tuesday. Then again.
A repeating day does not keep the man. Finger stops bending. Shoulder settles low. The room he always remembered arrives only as a word. Shop below fills with other versions of him. Each certain he finishes the table.
Two thousand three hundred and ninety-two Tuesdays. The Half Life of a Self. Work. Promises. What wears away when time will not.