Shoelaces

Marshmallows

I guess it makes sense that when the world you are living in has no sense of time and the only way to know when it is, is via a small calendar of the wall of your room, time starts to blur. Non-existent days blur into non-existent weeks blur into non-existent months, and I just sit by and let it happen. I wouldn't necessarily consider it a bad thing, but it's also not a good thing when I log onto EarthVision and realize a whole month has passed. At least it gives me a lot of content in highlights to binge watch, and even back on Earth, I loved binge watching.

To be honest, I don't really know why time is moving along in such a blur. Maybe the activities that I'm doing just get longer and longer, so they take up more time. Like when I went to the Swiss Alps with Alex and Haley, I thought that only a few hours passed, but it turned out we were there for a day and a half. But I'm not complaining, the Swiss Alps are beautiful.

Maybe I'm sleeping more. I think the record I hold with myself is twenty-six hours of continuous hibernation sleep, which honestly impressed me. I mean, it is a great time to catch up on the sleep I missed out on Earth when I stayed up late to study for a test (or finish binge watching the first season of a show).

Regardless of the cause, time is blurring.

The only hard part is that while time is blurring for me, it's not blurring on Earth. On Earth, time just moves along how it as always moved along, and the people I love walk along it. So, while it turns out they are approaching on a full year since my death, it still feels like just a few weeks ago to me.

And that means a lot of things. Like my family turning my room into a family game room because of how much I liked board games so they can always remember me. And that's very sweet, but now I no longer have a room on Earth, even if I was never going to use it again. So, yeah, it's weird. But I guess death is just weird.

"Whatcha staring at?" Haley asks, waving her hand in front of my face, breaking me from my trance.

"Oh, uh, nothing. It's just crazy how high up we are," I respond, pointing out the window of the train car we're in. I had told them that I always wanted to take a mountain train trip, so Haley just responded with "okay" and now we're here, on a train high up in the mountains, drinking hot chocolate.

"We can stop if you want, Darrion," Alex adds, still caring about my safety.

"No," I laugh. "I like it."

"Definitely add this shit to my list of food I actually enjoy," Haley adds after stealing Alex's mug of hot cocoa.

"It's called Hot Chocolate, Haley," Alex playfully scolds, taking his mug back from her. "And you can get your own."

"Here, you can have mine," I say, handing my mug to Haley and getting up from my seat to get closer to the window.

Snow falls outside of the car and onto the mountains, littering the slopes with white. The color of some evergreens still shines through, placed at different intervals throughout the hills. The train we're on continues to move, and soon, the trees I once was admiring are far behind me. Yet, I have no idea where this train is going, where it's destination. I have the privileging of finding out, but the trees behind me will never. And as the train rocks softly on the tracks, and the snow continues to fall, and the trees continue to shiver, I cry.

I let a few tears fall of my face before wiping them away with the back of my sleeve, taking a deep breath and returning to my seat.

"Is everything good, Darrion?" Alex says, probably seeing the redness and swell of my eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, everything's good," I pause. "I was just wondering if it's possible to, uh, skip over a certain time period in EarthVision. Like, so when I watch the highlight reel or something, it skips a week I don't want to see."