The sandpaper-rubbed-raw sensation across my arms. The ache in the left knee and right rotor-cuff. The weariness in muscles that runs deep to the bones. The sighing whistfulness of seeing only two sets of Christmas lights still on, when one of them is mine. The conviction of caving to the craving that covers what I refuse to see: the desolation.

The abyss of emptiness, as I watch all of the ghosts of my past parade by. The aloneness of realizing how far away a phone call to a friend is. That I lived, worked, raised a family, only to see such a time.

This sorrow, when aloneness, even amidst family, sheds its genteel outer garb of solitude to reveal its rags of isolation. This, which I conceal with any virtue or vice at my disposal. This.

And yet… this, too, shall pass.

noon

the neighbor’s tabby

stalking rabbits