Each morning, the city raises its curtain of smoke and a name, any name, slides toward the pale light of the bathroom. He recognizes himself in it though he is not himself, shares the breath that trembles when the mirror reveals the same skin, the same newborn wrinkle. He could turn the doorknob toward another destiny, but his fingers only know one curve and dare not change it. 

Because routine is not just habit, it is a modest god that demands tiny offerings, a sip of coffee, the knot of a tie, the click of the oven, and in return grants the illusion of permanence. Yet each daily gesture bleeds a millimeter of heartbeat; no one notices except the chest that harbors it. In the murmur of elevators pulses the muffled moan of a thousand small defeats, diffuse promises to write a verse, to change sidewalks, to say no. All postponed until a tomorrow that never takes flesh. 

One would say it would suffice with a decision, with overturning the table and wielding the different day. But human nature has learned to fear the edge of uncertainty; it knows that chaos has teeth and doesn't always distinguish skin from chains. Thus, the character opts for the cage, polishes it each afternoon, decorates it with plans that don't germinate so it looks less like prison and more like refuge. 

Meanwhile, out there, stories of escape throb with indecency, an old man who gave away his library and left to learn the science of tides; a nurse who traded night corridors for an infinite canvas of acrylics; a worker who abandoned the factory to converse with trees. Their footprints strike his window like rain at dawn, but they fail to draw him from his chair, not yet. 

Afternoon arrives and with it the final act, a pause in which the heart, insolent, asks if he still remembers how to dance. The answer is a thick silence, diluted by the hum of the fan and notifications that punctuate bedtime. The figure closes his eyes, and in the penumbra perceives the stitches left by the unlived, faint pangs, yes, but obstinate as moss on ancient stone. 

Tomorrow the curtain of smoke will return, and again that liturgical transit to the coffee maker. The wound will continue open, warm, almost invisible. And with it all, the attachment to repetition will persist, as if flesh were made of the same clay as hours, fragile, recognizable, incapable of releasing the map that leads it to the same place. Because there is pain in routine, yes, but also a dark love toward the rope that, even while biting the skin, keeps us safe from the nameless abyss.