there is a feeling of emptiness whenever someone leaves.  it is as though a piece of yourself, something that you had taken for granted, has gone.  and it's not an obvious piece, like an arm or a finger.  it's something internal and vague, like maybe someone stole a kidney in your sleep and left nothing but some neat, near-invisible scar.  it is an emptiness inside.

and suddenly, i wonder what it is that is missing.  i was being all business-as-usual, operating like a juggernaut through each successive day, with each task before me producing a focal point to be broken and resummoned, again and again and again.  the faces of those around me, and beside me, the conversations i had with them, out of peripheral vision, they were collateral conversations about the weather, or something else harmless and inconsequential...  i, they, could've been something more, but they never were allowed to be...

and now they are gone.  they have left.

and, yes, i can live without it, without them.

but i wonder if that isn't the problem?

***

i sometimes feel that there is a danger within me, like a vast abyss.  and i push words, and put distances between myself and others, to keep people from falling into me.  i guess i only have two switches: polite and reserved, or- something dangerous and beyond intimate, identity-consuming...  there is a sadness in not being able to let people in, but it's a necessary sadness.  there is no alternative but to hold the world at bay from this gravitational pull within myself.