The sky was closing in a haze, and so was I. The topics were always the same: personal struggles, childhood trauma, our views on the world. Even as our conversation deepened to reflect more of our inner selves, it still seemed to float lifeless on the surface of meaning. How do I always find myself here? Speaking words so personal and true, but somehow, void of substance. My mind pulled towards the parking lot as we passed it for the second time, with a feeling I couldn’t quite place. My therapist might have called it fear of being myself around new people; stemmed from a core belief that I’m abnormal. Or maybe I just felt the weight of my responsibilities swelling like a blister from weeks of resistance. This date was just another excuse to avoid my stagnant life. She asked me if I wanted to stay until the park closed. “I think I saw a sign that said 5pm,” she recalled, with a sparkle in her voice. I looked back towards my car for a moment, then buried my shivering hands in my pockets and trudged forward. It was dusk by the time we walked down to the shore and back again. Through the grove of maple trees carpeted in moss and licorice ferns. Water leaked from the sky and the haze continued its pursuit. The lot was nearing empty now. A car started behind her as she spoke. “Sorry, what?” I asked. “I feel so understood.” She repeated, tenderly. “Oh.” My heart pumped in my ear. “We should hang out again.” I blurted out to fill the silence; follow the script. “Yeah, that would be nice.” She said, then looked on intently with anticipation. Of what, I did not know. The clouds exhaled again and we hung in our sputtering silence. When we could no longer fight off our loss for words, we waved goodbye. The engine turned over and I settled into my seat. A gentle breeze brushed my face. I turned to find, like a puzzle haphazardly torn apart, broken glass littering the seat beside me. The glove box and center console hung open, mockingly; the coin tray thrown against the far door. My backpack was gone. This is why I’m always careful, I thought, and wondered why I ever let myself forget. This time my excuse was the weather. Why bring my backpack into the rain, when I could keep it dry in my car? It’d only be a couple hours, I had said to myself. Wherever my backpack was now, it was sure to be wet. Thanks to my abundance of concern, so was the seat, now buried under my windows remains. And all for a first date that went as so many others had, leaving me empty and jagged, like the new opening in my door frame. I turned off the car and stepped back into the rain. She rolled by, waving again, and my mind boiled. They wouldn’t have done it if they knew the backpack was empty, except for a jacket and a couple of Clif bars. It wasn’t even that nice of a pack. How stupid must they have felt to find nothing of value? Maybe they discarded it out of disappointment, maybe before they left the parking lot. “Oh no! What happened?” A voice approached. “Are you okay?” It was her again. “Yeah well,” I mumbled, and saw her car was still running, door open to the pouring rain, “can’t really do anything about it now.” She looked at me as if she too had been shattered. “They didn’t take anything I can’t replace, so —” “Is there anything I can do?” She asked desperately, as she seemed to be searching herself for an answer. “No. I’m just annoyed, that’s all. It could only have been worse.” I said, trying to silence her sympathetic pain. Her eyes began to glow as a smile made its way across her face. “Well, I seriously admire how you don’t feel really bothered by it!” I cracked a grin and waited as she returned to her car. “Are you sure you don’t need anything? I feel so bad leaving you here, and especially in weather like this!” “I’ll be fine. Thanks though.” I tried again to assure her. “Well I had a really nice time! I really hope to see you again soon. And good luck with your window!” She hollered through the pattering of rain on car roofs. Once finally out of sight, I threw my hood over my head, and searched for my pack: over the retaining wall, in the garbage cans, under the bushes. And my mind searched for explanations. I thought back to a group of kids I saw, soon after she asked how long we should stay. There were five of them, in bright clothing, swaying with teenage arrogance on their recently extended limbs. Hooligans, I thought when I saw them, and almost uttered the word. They weren’t entering the park to appreciate nature, I assumed. But if not that, then what? I don’t know for sure that they did it. I have no proof except for a character judgement from a hundred feet away. Nothing more than a desperate grasp for meaning, but a satisfying resolution. Resentment and anger consumed me. The hole in the sky opened wider. A park ranger drove by, suspicious of my pacing. His partner wielded a megaphone. Oh cool, I thought, four more eyes that somehow missed what had happened. The rest of the cars were gone, though I didn’t recall them leaving. I could have called the cops to file a report, but what were they going to do? There weren’t any cameras in the park, and there were surely better uses of their time. I stepped back into my running car and drove.

I didn’t play music on my way home — something I didn’t realize at the time. Maybe my thoughts were loud enough. The rain and wind whipped and slapped in eddies through the missing window. My mind curled in on itself, away from a world it decided wasn’t worth the effort, and recited propositions of further isolation. This is what happens when you stray too far from home. What you get for having nice things: more to lose. Shards of glass fell from the doorframe, like a gaping maw losing teeth. The growing pile of shattered remains rattled and scraped as the car shifted. A bitter breeze blew across the dark lake, leaving my fingers stiff and dry. I cracked a window to ease the thumping in my ear. I recalled something she said as we’d stood on the shore, looking out at an object floating in the distance: a speck of darkness in the seamless backdrop of grey water fading to hazy skies. “What if we are nothing but our minds?” She started. “And what if our bodies exist only to make our minds more tangible?” I looked over at her, my thoughts still on the darkness. “Then the physical world,” she continued, “is like a mirror: existing only to help us see ourselves indirectly, from a new perspective?” Silence returned as we stared at the smudge, pondering the view. I saw a log, floating against desaturated ripples: a piece of former life, sinking ever so slowly into the waves. In that same silhouette she saw a couple of birds, enjoying each other’s company despite the monotonous gloom. It was too hazy to tell for sure. I kept picturing that stain in the water, trying to see a beak, or the flap of a wing. A sign of life, or a sliver of meaning. My fingers ached as I gripped the steering wheel tighter, not noticing that I was. At the realization, I eased my tightened shoulders, and plunged back into my pulsing thoughts. It wasn’t the backpack I was upset about — I could buy another — or the window — I could get it fixed. Maybe I was plagued by the feeling that this might have all been avoided. What if we had met a different day? Or left earlier, after the first lull in our conversation? Thoughts that I knew to be foolish, even then. It was more than that though. No, something else entirely. I was almost frustrated that it wasn’t all a big deal. Like the record that was constantly looping in my head for months, driving me half insane, was all just an attempt to avoid this, such an insignificant misfortune. But it happened even still. Fear and pessimism, two old friends had conspired against me, telling my brain the world was something that it was not. It’s okay, I told myself for the first time I can remember, and started to breath again. Eventually my mind eased away from those consuming thoughts, and a wave of calm washed over me with a truth I had forgotten. This world is indifferent, I remember that now. Which was strangely comforting. Like staring death in the face and remembering that you are, in spite of its efforts, still alive. She asked me if I got home safe. Yes, I said, I did — something else to be grateful for. I had calls to make and appointments to schedule: the bureaucratic fallout of the day’s events. That, on top of my neglected responsibilities that littered the space around me. But that same cluttered room I’d left just hours before felt different now. What had seemed like too much to handle, now felt weightless; or I, immune to its crippling load. I set down my keys and laid on the floor, gazing through the skylight at the moon’s glow. My body sunk into the wooden boards, seeming to meld with the physical world, and my mind slowly rediscovered how to breathe.