Being on the Outside

It was easy in the end, to get up and go out into the garden and feel the patched sunlight shine and blink upon my face, take in the crisp smell of damp earth and leaf left after the rain. I could still be slumped in that chair, inside, beset by aches and pains. A few taken steps has me here, outside. The narrow circle that held me in my own mind has stretched to the far fence, a strange, new world has flooded in. I can no longer tell where my boundary is, my limits don't seem defined by skin. It's over there, somewhere beyond the fern, even more distant than that branch hoisting its leaves into the air. Nor do I know where my center is, or the person at the core that keeps me in orbit around a name. Rather I am five senses wired to somewhere, no more than what I take in. It would be good to remain here and not go back. There's an appeal in the idea of self dissolution, to be a boundless no-one. But there are those that I love who are not here in this gated, reclusive space and who care for me in a world where my aches and pains reside, back inside and within the circumference of who I am