Robbie
Day 89. I keep numbers the way some men keep saints. Coffee. Run. Work. Meeting. Sleep like it’s a trick you learn with repetition. Every morning I write the count on a sticky note and slap it to the mirror: proof that I can make one thing hold still.
And still, the map in my head won’t stop drawing itself toward teeth.
Cearen showed up again the way fog does—present before you notice, impossible to argue with once you do. He leaned against the brick under my window, hands in his pockets, eyes with that not-quite-human way of taking in a scene like it’s a chessboard.
“You asked for stupid,” he said by way of hello. “You kept trying anyway. Come on.”
He didn’t say where. He never does. We went down to where the river bends under the old trestle, where the concrete columns wear g
