Blood

This homecoming is a strange thing.
It feels like I have never left.
Conversations with friends never halt, never fail, never make me feel like I missed a year.
These roads are still mine, knowing where the speed traps hide and where the shortcuts are.
The wine section in Checkers still has the Odd Bins Pinotage.

And yet, everything has changed as well.
I stay with my aunt, digging through boxes of old clothes and books and things that do not matter.
Our house is another family's house now.
The roads are changing, with construction sites everywhere.
The Odd Bins is no longer #706, but #710, with its date changing from 2011 to 2012.

I have missed a year.

But then again, so have the others.