EVISITING THE LOOPING lake track that morning felt so horribly nostalgic that it stirred in me, with its crackle of shifting limestone under each footfall, the feeling of an old betrayer begging at my heels for forgiveness, desperate to reconnect with me, and I found it easy to deny.

After all these years

, I thought,

all these years gone, and now you start begging. And you still don’t feel like home

.