The young man pondered how long he’d been doing the same thing. He was prone to starting things new, which had the unfortunate side effect of having to quit the thing before. Surely, he never imagined he’d quit his education, but that decision, for once, was made by the circumstances, and he couldn’t blame himself. Even still, what he really wondered was how, like Russian dolls, every part of his life seemed to be some version of the same thing.

The man heaved a final box up and onto a loading cart, and walked it up a ramp into the back of a large truck. His shoulders had grown broad from the daily work, it had been 3 months now. Among the neatly piled boxes, the straight lines of his frame made him seem mechanical. He stood in there, and wiped his wrist against his brow, the faint smell of rubber from his gloves reminded him of the gym storage room at his high school. Is high school now just a memory?