[Nobody’s favorite]

Nobody’s favorite, when you went out then returned, they didn’t seem to notice, you thought. In fact, the world had gotten so icy while you were away, it seemed to slip by frictionlessly, never really touching you. You look down at your hands and see how aged they are, which were once supple and sort of vigorous. Is it just the dryness of the winter air? You’ve been accruing things in your travels, prodigal outlay, and now the family dog doesn’t even recognize you. Draped as you are in anonymous finery. Smelling as you are of somewhere strange. His (your dog’s) master dead and gone and him fallen on evil times, from his perspective. You can’t get back home again, unfortunately. The dog is like twenty and you are like twenty years older. Those twenty years felt like fifty, estranged, as you were, from this island in yourself. Surrounded by water and scanning the horizon for land, estrangement has become a pose within you.