By now, you’ll probably have noticed I’m not where you expected me to be. Perhaps at some point, you’ll do a perfunctory, pointless search for me…

…between scarcely worn and barely yellowed pages in dusty books, purchased many long years ago, read once, then carelessly filed on shelves lined with other whispering, dusty once-read books…

…among the spices in the cabinet, cloistered in sterile tins and jars preventing their heady aromas from mingling into new, earthy combinations, purchased for complicated, disappointing, forgotten recipes prepared once in decades past…

…amidst the tools, pitted and corroding in the shed…

…in moldering, disintegrating board game boxes, rules lost and forgotten, pieces missing…

…out among the twisted trees in the orchard, overripe peaches rotting and falling to the ground…

If you were more observant and if you cared more, you’d know exactly where I am which is, in truth, where I need to be. You will never understand that.