I Only Come When You Call

Even when you live in the same town for twenty-five years, your routes change. The places you frequent change, the roads once familiar go untaken. There are houses I could go back to that would welcome me with warmth and genuine affection, but I can't see them as they once were. They have become smaller, less alive. I glance at the windows, and can't imagine the lives inside any more than a place I've never been. The homes of old friends, or the old homes of the longtime friends who remain, are paler now, foreboding even. A driveway or sidewalk that leads to a door whose threshold I have passed through countless times appears now, simultaneously, familiar and foreign.