To emigrate is a one way ticket in so very many ways, for while you are gone the world you leave carries on and evolves. The space you occupied in the lives of others is naturally filled. You change. They change. So be sure before you leave friends and family that this is what you want to do. Should you ever return it will be as if you emigrated once more.
In the half-light Caleb looks like the shadow he's become. Hunched over the baggage he could be anybody, and in a way I guess he is. I took our bond for granted, and in my naivety I'd thought it unbreakable. But when that bus pulls away it won't only be broken, but shattered into fragments more numerous than the stars. I want to beg, plead, get down on my knees and tell him that his life here has meaning, that our love has meaning, but I know that face. It is the one he wears when his ears are closed and his mind has put up barriers to all new information. So no matter what I say it will only push him further away. So when I walk closer it is with a mask of contentment. I wish him well with the voice that came so naturally before his plan to do great things far away, it sounds like me but it isn't. I'm already in transition to become a person I never wanted to be. The bitterness is rising like bile into my mouth and when he's gone I'll have no reason to swallow it anymore.