a jog.

7 blocks.

She was only 7 blocks from her house in perfect white suburbia where kids spend the evening hours screaming and chasing each other up the asphalt street.

7 blocks had her jogging down a street where the curbs were smoothed to the point of no definition, and the lawns are only grassy patches on dirt continents. The houses were silent, blinds drawn in front of windows made from dusty glass and screen doors that didn't quite fit the frame.

On one side of the street a YIELD sign was angled facing the ground; on the other side was the 50 feet of empty asphalt and sidewalk of a dead-end street.

She turned over the corner, only to find the eyes of seven kids all under the age of 8 watching her. As she jogged closer they quickly ran about the yard, shoving their scooters off the sidewalk but never leaving their gaze from her. They watched her till she was four houses away, before they started to scream and cheer again.

The driveways are cracked and crumbled in some parts, with trees taking over the main front lawn of some houses; encasing the silent neighborhood in long shadows.

On the other side of the street teenagers are talking. Their walk is measured with percise steps taken so their heels meet the ground with legs outstretched and spine curved backwards. Their hoodies are gray and covering their faces and she wonders if any of them will grow up to be victims.

Turning a corner a block away from her is a mother with a baby in a stroller. A minute pass and soon she's jogging past, nodding in greating to the mother who seems startled and nervous. The baby gurgles and claps its hands messily, the mother hushes it softly.

9 blocks later, and she's crossing the invisible line between the housing districts.

A block later and the houses are getting larger, the lawns are getting greener, and the sidewalks are perfect.

7 blocks later and she's stopping in front of her house in a white suburbia, listening to the children run up and down the asphalt street. Her breathe is caught in her lungs and she's struggling to regain it, and her adventure to the other side of the fence is done for the day.

7 blocks away is her secret entrance to to a different world hidden in plain site.

7 blocks.

Limits to Infinity.

Some friendships end abruptly—maybe over a love interest, maybe over money, maybe over personal ambition. There might be drama, complete with some exchange of screaming and crying and hysterical reminders of past promises. It's true. Breakups are often ugly.

Not us, though.

One of my favorite authors, John Green, liked to talk about numbers and infinity and how some infinities were bigger than others. Take 0.1, for instance. Then suppose you follow it with 0.11, then 0.111, 0.1111 and so on until you have an infinity of ones. But this isn't as big as the infinity of twos, with 0.2, 0.22, 0.222, 0.2222, and all the rest, each number adding to an infinity twice as big.

I liked to think that we were whole once, years ago--or at least as whole as we could be. Within the wholeness of our selves, we shared a warm, stalwart infinity that would stretch across years, college, careers, marriages, children… We'd remedy our midlife crises with a great big heat-to-heart talk and equally great big quantities of chocolate. I realize now that I was wrong. What we share is not so much infinity as it is infinitesimal, dwindling with every passing week of booked schedules and cancelled dates.

0.1 You play varsity tennis, I do varsity speech.
0.01 The day we're supposed to meet up with old friends, I have plans with my boyfriend.
0.001 I just don't see you at school anymore.

One day, you decide that our infinitesimal is no longer worth the recognition. It has become negligible, no longer a significant figure. Humans may not be inverse functions with asymptotes, but we still have limits that converge on values, except that instead of numbers, those values are usually things like trust, perseverance, and integrity.

So you took our 0.0000001
and rounded down.

From time to time, I still see your face, the flicker of light in your irises, the way you twist your mouth upward into a smile. For a moment I wonder if we are still clinging to that 0.000000001.

But I know better.
We are nothing.
I have other infinities to seek.

fridays

Friday afternoons felt like the only time she ever saw her father, even though every evening when she made the table for dinner she asked if he wanted ice in his water and he always responded.

"No ice, thank you,"

But on Friday afternoons she would treck through the front door, shoulders aching and feet blistered and he would be sitting at the kitchen table, Wall Street Journal in front of him.

To his right, his glasses and a bottle of diet Pepsi.

To his left, a bag of Doritos and Salsa con Queso.

The only sound between the ruffling of his papers was the sound of the jar of queso being slid across table, and they both ignored the countdowns they each were preparing for.

Till his retirement in three years.

Till his eventual knee-surgery sometime this year.

Till his elder daughter finally straightened out her life.

Till his youngest daughter figured out hers.

Till his wife aligned out her spine.

Till the Exterminator comes next Tuesday.

Till the lawn needs to be mowed again.

And all they did was rap their knuckles on the table and slide a jar of Salsa con Queso between the two of them because there wasn't a use waiting.

They never talked during these moments. Then again, they never talked, ever. They were strangers connected by a bond of parent-and-child; now only a girl who made herself grow up when she was 4 and went to her first funeral, and a man who stopped trying to dye his hair after the first of numerous times his health was sapped from his bloody fingernails.

They pass each other in the hallway with nary a glance, but sometimes they ask how the other is doing, and they listen with half an ear; they speak with a quarter of enthusiasm.

When she comes home with tears in her eyes and a heart broken within her crushed and crackled knuckles he offers a band-aid, and a promise of wisdom to come. Stretching his wisdom across a chasm that neither are sure exist anymore, she heals her cuts and he watches, too weary to even attempt to pick up the band-aid that's fallen to the floor.

And when he comes back with curses on his lips and a suitcase full of papers of wrong ideas, she can only offer a reprieve in the promise that he'll be done soon. She lends him an understand look leveled with a promise of brownies over the weekend, and the unspoken deal of not mentioning either of theirs diets.

Sometimes she wants to remember when she was younger and they went on carnival rides together and he was able to pick up dollar bills when they fell to the ground an she wasn't afraid of touching him in fear that his skin will burst from the pressure.

But she dips her doritos into a jar of Salsa con Queso before sliding it back where it barely touches the edge of the Wall Street Journal and she's fine with waiting for deadlines.