We decided to walk to the pond in the park even though the temperature was dropping fast and they were calling for snow. We followed the path that rings the water, a big white moon floating motionless on its unbroken surface. Halfway around, you brought up the story I’d sent you. In the story, time for some is circular, the future as much a memory as the past. We talked about the way the story’s form mimics this perception of time, the headiness of the science and linguistics that explains it, all foregrounded on a physicist's description of how light refracts off water. When we started to circle around the pond again you joked, we should leave lest we get stuck in an endless loop.
The next day you sent a voice note lamenting that the timing wasn’t right for us, and we made a vague plan for the future. In my head I continued our bit. This was always the way things were going to go, time is circular, everything that is happening and will happen has already happened, etc. Something about the ways that light refracts off of water? The particulars of that last part escape me, but I do know that for something to shimmer it also has to move.
✦˖°.