We lie in bed long talking into the new year. You think my family is not interested in you because they don’t ask questions about your past. This bothers you. I push back, saying they ask no questions about me, either, or anyone else for that matter. It’s not their style. But you insist their disinterest is obvious to you, that you will tell them things that then just sit there, unremarked upon. I push back. I want you to love them, I want them to love you. Sometimes my own love for them is overwhelming, and I wonder what it is I’m doing here, so far from them. My friends are all elsewhere and I long for them, too. I try to hide this longing from you, without much success I suspect. You are much more able than I, or willing perhaps - is it a matter mostly of will? - to move along with the ebb and flow of people and places. You are much more here, in this place.