Lonely isn’t the word. It’s something else entirely. The ghosts of ourselves haunt it. Anyone lucky to live well enough and long enough will experience this. We can see what was and ourselves in that space with what was. And like a phantom limb, feel the pain of the love we gave missing.
Distance, time, and momentum create separation. Circumstance can create a chasm and make it impossible to be physically present with the ones we love, so we ache. To be where we were, we yearn for a vision of our life that is now mist.
Patience is a slow-burning twitch of the nerve that loses to anticipation and longing. The ghost of ourselves from a former time haunts our present, slipping into the still moments, begging for an apparition.
Love is something you give of yourself to others. Tangible only in absence, love is the ghost of ourselves.