I’ve wound up back among the friendships and the card games and the music and the fine conversations and the research papers and the due dates and the 8PM spaghetti and the coffee shop adventures and the liquor and the walks across the quad to class.

Between that world and me, there is a wall made out of glass.

I can see through it.

I can see them. Smile at them. Laugh with them, walk beside them, even hold them. I can imagine pleasant nonsense about lovely future times.

But I can’t be with them. I can’t be one of them. I don’t know how.

It makes me feel alone in the middle of a crowd.