This Space Around

When I was a younger kid, this great, big world seemed so much larger than it is now.

I could lie in my oft-neglected sandbox and look up at the pine branch-covered sky and think, "Mom hasn't come looking for me."

Now I'm an older kid and the walls are coming closer, the noise- less noisy. Branches are being chopped off and surveillance cameras are installing themselves. Prickly pinecones are picking each other up off the Bermuda grass. Bermuda grass is slithering away. My sandbox is losing sand at an alarming rate and the vast plane of sky is eagerly splitting at the seam.

Less color, more empty. More zoom, less space. Minutes from now it will be me as the remainder. And nobody is seen to blame.