While I Was Away

So the world has apparently continued to do its thing while I have first been consumed with concern about my sister's health and then her passing. The pages of the newspaper, the news being broadcast, falling out of favor with me. It is quite astounding how irrelevant the rest of the universe can become in a blink of an eye or a turn of the screw.

I awaken today ready to begin to turn my attention to the political furies in this nation that have long been my focus, to the wars abroad that have a life, or death, of their own, to the athletes who gather near the Eiffel Tower ready, willing and able to demonstrate otherworldly skills that the rest of us not only can't emulate but sometimes can barely comprehend.

The universe has clearly not noticed my absence, has not shifted on its axis because I have been less diligent in taking it to task for its deficiencies. And it will surely shrug upon my reemergence, my words bouncing off it as harmless as a fly striking the side of a building that touches the sky.

Nothing has changed while I was away. Except I now return to a world forever altered, for my sister is among us no more.