When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

Suffused with optimism, I recognised I’d always been too self-involved to absorb the world around me, or to appreciate its entirety. I’d never taken pleasure from simple delights like picking raspberries from roadside bushes,

Or did the end justify the means?

Because the more you trust in someone, the more opportunities you give them to shatter your illusions about them.

It was better to remain on my island than drown in somebody else’s sea.

I had more baggage than an airport check-in,