on a startlingly familiar timeline / unplanned but predicted / delayed and inevitable / unsurprising until its unbidden early arrival: another departure approaches. reluctance abounds and I want to say it’s the hero’s journey except to save myself now feels out of step: a better plan had been. precise, promising, beautiful. amidst the seep and stretch of an alone that isn’t lonely so much as marooned. a culture strange (/estranged?), not new. purpose shared and celebrated. the earth invitational. a pair of mini donkeys, pen full of piglets, playgrounds for goats, Great Pyrenees at work, freshly shorn scrawny lambs. the deer who lately routinely fold us—human and kitten—into their herd, unannounced, calmly curious, wary. communal healing of high school hearts. inadvertent temperance, unsolicited calm. contemplation unaccompanied. years without witnesses. years spent growing a best friendship worth its name suffering brutally beautifully now. and how. another departure approaches: an unbidden early arrival / inevitable and immediate / predicted but unplanned / on a startlingly familiar timeline.