9 years, 6 months, and 5 days
by Chris Scott

I don’t reset the clock

I don’t slip into old patterns

I don’t go inside the liquor store at Montello and Mt. Olivet

I don’t think about the specific shade of orange prescription bottles or places I could hide them

I don’t obsess over the past or worry too much about the future

What I do is I keep walking down to the Mount Olivet Cemetery and sit in the grass and listen to the birds and traffic and then walk back home

What I do is I eat a perfectly ripe nectarine

What I do is I wake up every morning and do everything for the first time


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Chris Scott's work has appeared in The New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs, HAD, hex literary, scaffold, Michigan City, Burial Magazine, and elsewhere. He is a regular ClickHole contributor and elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. You can read his work at www.chrisscottwrites.com.

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