“So will I,” she promises.

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we’ve done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she’s in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she’s given to me.

I watch her as she falls asleep next to me. I watch her as she breathes. I watch her as the dreams take hold.

This memory.

I will only have this.

I will always have this.

He will remember this, too. He will feel this. He will know it’s been a perfect afternoon, a perfect evening.

He will wake up next to her, and he will feel lucky.

Times moves on. The universe stretches out. I take a Post-it of a heart and move it from my body to hers. I see it sitting there.

I close my eyes. I say goodbye. I fall asleep.

Day 6034

I wake up two hours away, in the body of a girl named Katie.

Katie doesn’t know it, but today she’s going far away from here. It will be a total disruption to her routine, a complete twist in the way her life is supposed to go. But she has the luxury of time to smooth it out. Over the course of her life, this day will be a slight, barely noticeable aberration.

But for me, it is the change of the tide. For me, it is the start of a present that has both a past and a future.

For the first time in my life, I run.