Infinite absence

The sun sets quickly and brilliantly at this time of year and I had come out of the house to stand on the beach to watch the dying sun light up the water in fiery reds and purples. In the clear air of the late evening I can see for what seems like miles in both directions and there is no one else on the unending sand. The occasional shrill cry of a lone bird in the far distance behind me is the only disturbance to the otherwise meditative periodic rhythm of the waves lapping at the sand all along the shoreline.

Standing at the water's edge with my feet just at the point where the waves give up and recede, I get lost in the sounds and in watching the brilliant colors of the sun on the water slowly dull into a more uniform twilight.

In time, I lay down on my back on the beach and wait for the stars to herald the coming of the night.

Your absence surrounds me, an infinite absence stretching all along the water's edge. It suffuses my thoughts as an only friend. What trick of mind is it that conjures up an absence?  How strange to be besotted with an illusion I have created myself.

I have looked back in time, I have looked far into the future, and found no evidence of you. Yet your absence is in my present, always. What form of insanity this is, I cannot tell.

Can one know something solely from its absence?

At nightfall, the stars come out to shine on me.