The Weight of Future Departures

I’m missing her already but she has not left yet. The anticipation of feeling her absence casts a distinct shadow upon my outlook and I’m beginning to understand better what the true definition of dread is. It is unfocused sadness—something is almost missing so I mourn it—transitionally. I have one boot here and the other? Missing? I cannot describe it other than to observe, as I walk alone, the packed dirt and gravel pathway. And to the right of my boot is a divot—a hole where there was once a stone. Someone has obviously chosen to remove it from the dirt and pocket it—it was somehow special to them. Now all that is left is a perfectly shaped hole, one that echoes the shape of the stone it once cradled. Does that socket not miss that stone?

—Darjeeling