I am trying to picture your face when we were twelve and you sat across from me in English. Or at sixteen, when I glanced up from my chemistry test and caught you looking at me. Seventeen, in the backseat of your car, eyes illuminated by streetlight. In our twenties, freshly shaved and slightly windswept, saying, I do. Or at thirty-two, your lips gently caressing our baby boy’s cheek. I am trying to picture you from two years ago. But there is only this face—yesterday’s and today’s, the same face as tomorrow’s—this current iteration of you. I have seen this face every day for the past 429 days. Have heard your voice, a constant din from behind the office door. You are on the phone again. You are on the phone always. You are never going or returning. No longer a sight for sore eyes at the end of the day when the baby is screaming and the pasta is overcooked, bloated, and soggy, dinner ruined. There is never your face coming through the door, returning home. There is only home and home and home some more. Endless hours of you.

I am trying to picture your face when I tell you I’m leaving, or better yet when you emerge from the office at the end of the day to find me already gone. Our child sitting on the floor with a handful of markers, a pile of graham crackers. Dishes still in the sink, laundry unfolded, no plan for dinner. My voice a tinny echo asking you to “please leave a message.”

I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Claire Taylor is a writer in Baltimore, MD. Her micro-chapbook, A History of Rats, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. You can find Claire online at clairemtaylor.com and Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor.

He draws a blue circle. One loop and then another, and another. A red circle comes next. Right on top of the blue one. Then purple, orange, green, yellow. And one more blue for good measure.

“Look!” He holds it up for me to see.

“Beautiful,” I say. “What is it?”

“It’s the world.”

Everything feels like it’s spinning these days. I wake to a morning indistinct from the one before it, as if time has doubled back on itself. Each day a blue circle on top of a blue circle on top of a blue circle on top of a red circle. Purple, orange, green and yellow. I want to bury my face in a pillow and scream. I want to pull him into my lap and cry into his hair. Tears filling the blonde whirlpool swirling around the crown of his head. The former soft spot. When he was a baby, I longed to press it. Sink my finger down into the gray matter mush of his brain. Now his soft spot is the word no, and I have to keep myself from pressing that too.

“Do you want to play cars and trucks?” He asks me, and I say yes because I am his only playmate.

“Can I sit in your lap?” He wants to know while we read books, and I say yes because I am his mother.

“Should we have a dance party?” He suggests, and I say yes because there is nothing better to do.

We clear the floor and put on music. He wears his tutu and I wear the same pair of pants as I have every day for the last four months. We spin. First him. Then me. Then the two of us together, holding hands.

Around and around in circles.

Around and around like the world.

Claire Taylor (she/her) lives in Baltimore, Maryland and online at clairemtaylor.com. Her works has appeared in numerous print and online publications. She is the creator of Little Thoughts, a monthly newsletter of original writing for kids.