Elusive

The endless summer days end in a cold rain on Monday morning. I ran around the royal grounds and met not a person in the woods, as the weather ran in tendrils along my cheeks. Walked back down the main street and tried to see my reflection in the eyes of people I'd meet, try to find my belonging.

We sat in their living room, drinking coffee and smiling at the children, their newborn baby still resting in my arm, as the evening grew sunny and warm in the late hour. I looked at these people who live in the very core of my heart, people whose mere existence makes me second-guess my home across the ocean, and I thought what an immense blessing it is to love. But when she says I miss you, when she says she'll stay here if I return, I do not understand the words. The mere idea that I exist in their world when I am not here seems preposterous. How could anything in me, possibly mean anything, truly, to you?

The nights carry on with their blue skies and birdsong, oblivious to the struggles of humanity. It's reassuring, when everything else is so hard.