You're out walking, driving. Sitting. Unfamiliar places or familiar but seen at last. Bus stops, train stations, the inevitable eatery.
It dawns on you that you're bleeding, diminished
yet you feel stronger than you can ever recall feeling. A new delirium.
Everyone around you. Everyone.
Everyone you see.
The swaddled newborn next to you looking unfocused in your direction, at the mother, at the others.
The care lines. The mottled hands. The pink hands. All colours. Everyone. All sexes and predilections and convictions. All proclivities. All of them.
Everyone.
For this little forever you are the least interesting thing to have existed. They are all so much more important and intriguing than you will ever be.
Everyone
else.
Smiling, laughing. The inaudible conversations. The too audible ones. They walk dogs. They push strollers. At least one happy, indeterminate creature they had on a leash had only three legs.
Crows feet. Gestures, sullen and wild. Serious eyes. Wetted lips and rising and falling throats. Skin rough and smooth, receding hairlines, loose skin and taut through times of abundance and otherwise. Unconscious scratching and unwarranted and nervous hahaing. All this and everything else besides.
Never mind that these are days of thin money. Never mind the decided lack of exuberance flowing over everything. Never mind the lousy weather.
Or the vagaries of life rising slowly up from within, or around the corner the phone calls filled with hobbling and heartbreaking news.
All the terrors and triumphs of your life have leached away because of every person you see until you are left
with nothing.
And slowly it dawns on the small part of you remaining, that you have pulled off history's greatest disappearance
yet again.
Fade into you.
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