Something has changed. I wasn’t told of the change, so I learned of it piecemeal. Bit by bit, the new way of things has become increasingly clear. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly. Perhaps I am at fault, but I have searched my memory and don’t recall any offending incident.
I walk along the streambed and watch the tiny fiddler crabs burrow in the brackish mud. The Spanish moss drapes me, caresses my shoulders, shuts me out from the world. I leave no footprints in the grass. My white jacket flutters in the hot summer wind.
This place is beautiful, but I am so alone. My loneliness is a gulf that stretches to the horizon and back. My people, my friends, they have left me here to burrow in the mud. Even the fiddler crabs skitter away from me when I approach them.
When I reach out to my people, I am spurned. I can see them across the flowing waters; my people are out there, laughing and playing and living. Without me. I need to climb this tree and put them out of my mind, for I am out of theirs.
I lean against the tree, the ache in my chest too great to move further.
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