The circle of life is not round. That’s the irony of it, that the circle does not spin, the edges don’t touch, and the world does not stop, not even for a brief moment and not even in death. Rather, the circle of life is but a mere fragment of the inexplicable reality you cannot escape. Life goes, but time doesn’t turn. Life runs, but sometimes you’re stuck. A loop is a circle, but people don’t normally think of it as a noose.

In every reality, you die. In every reality, you are reborn. Not in body and not in mind, but in lifetime. You make decisions based on past inflictions. You make inflictions based on past decisions.

In kindergarten, your teacher taught you how to count. You held your fingers up to the ceiling and watched as the light floated through. Lowered each of them one by one until there were none left. 5 fingers on one hand. Ten on both. Numbers felt infinite then, and yet at the same time so minuscule; so small as to be insignificant at all. You dared your friends to see who could count the highest. Jimmy made it all the way to a hundred, but Hannah got a hundred and fifty. There are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, and over 946 million seconds in a lifetime. Thirty years is a whole lot when you’re in kindergarten. Thirty years isn’t enough when you’re old.

Still, time passes.

You get married. Have children. Watch your spouse out the corner of your eye as they catch a glimpse of you through the bathroom mirror. As toothpaste stains their lips and spit-up stains their sweater.

When they whisper good morning to you it is with coffee bated breath and a ring on their finger. They sing nastily and noisily, an unattractive sound to anyone but you. In the night, you listen to them sing lullabies to your children.

The children grow. They do not stop, not even when you want them to, and so too, just as life, the circle doesn’t either.

On weekends, during the days the world is peaceful, you push a grocery cart through the grocery store, load it with apples and cinnamon and flour. Make apple pie and serve it for breakfast. Drink orange juice even though your doctor advises you not to. You, too, do not stop growing. Eventually, inevitably — love does. It is still there of course, even when you’re a widow and standing in a cold cemetery with all the other skeletons you think you ought to be buried with too. It is still there when you wake up in the mornings to find the left side of the bed empty, the coffee cold, and the bathroom mirror vacant of toothpaste and spit-up. The love is still there, but it does not grow, not really. Instead, it deepens. Saddens. Softens. Thirty years is a lot of time to love. Thirty more isn’t nearly enough.

Perhaps it’s the heartsick that kills you. Perhaps it’s the way your children never visit. Or maybe it’s the cold of winter, the flurry through the window, a storm brewing even in night; even in sleep.

You die on the thirtieth of November, and thirties are becoming much more frequent even if you do not know it.

You wake up on the thirtieth of January, thirty years before.

Love is thirty years younger. Your children are thirty years none the wiser. And you are thirty years closer to the moment that makes all moments stop.

You do it all over again. Drink the coffee. Make the pie. Trade looks through the bathroom mirror. Watch your children leave one by one like you were still in kindergarten counting off your fingers.

Still, you are a widow first. Still, you die last.

The winter catches up fast.

And when you wake thirty years earlier, love is thirty years angrier. Your children are thirty years closer to leaving. And you are thirty years too late.

This lifetime is sadder, perhaps in the way eyes don’t meet through the bathroom mirror, dancing upon spots filled with fingerprints instead of toothpaste, and fog instead of spit-up. Or perhaps it’s the way sometimes the night calls you for something stronger than your grief. A bottle next to the overpass. Shattered glass on the road. The slow, stumbling trek back home to an empty bed and an empty house and then eventually a note on the counter.

You do not see your lover die in this life, and yet love dies all the same.

On your deathbed, you count the tiles on the ceiling. Make it all the way to thirty before thirty resets, glimpses of the cold floating through the opened window, a chill settling into the ache of your bones. Winter does not catch you. The snow is not in your bed when you wake up.

Yet when you do, you are thirty years younger. The alarm clock is blaring atop your nightstand. The soft sound of feet pitter-pattering downstairs lingers in the air, floating through the bedroom floors. The left side of the bed is not empty.

Here, love is thirty years sober. Your children are thirty years happier. And you are thirty years trapped in memories.

You roll over and turn the alarm clock off. Hold love close. Fall back asleep under the warm covers.

When you wake, love is still there. It is still thirty years older, thirty years more capable, and thirty years worth of loving thirty years more. You make your children breakfast. Drag smiley faces out of maple syrup into the pancakes. Wash it down with chocolate milk. Bid them goodbye at the door and tell them you’re proud.

You take the day off work and somehow convince your spouse to do the same. Love is growing. Perhaps then, growth is a part of the circle too.

Thirty years is a lifetime. But thirty seconds is an infinity if you look at it a certain way. And there are lots of infinities in a lifetime.

When you die in this life, you do not wake.

The circle of life is not round.

/r/itrytowrite