Pierced through the heart, but never killed...

The people around me all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. I imagine myself years from now, maybe at my hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my thirty second. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine my home town deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.