My Fog

I was looking for an old photo to show my wife when a peculiar image appeared. Little light, plenty of artefacts from the primitive smartphone camera of sixteen years ago, something extremely blurred within an indistinct dark grey blanket.

I recognised it. I smiled. It was exactly as I had intended it, when I took it. My fog.

I was born in a place where fog was an extremely rare phenomenon, and I have lived for many years now in an area where fog is a constant for much of the year. Or perhaps I should say it was, because in recent years things have changed here too. The first few times, it frightened me. At the wheel, it worried me. But when I wasn't driving, I welcomed it with affection, my fog.

That day I was confused. Saddened, unable to truly make sense of things. I decided to go out on foot, well wrapped up, and I ventured out. A few metres from home, I stopped seeing the buildings. The sounds are different too, when I walk through my fog. Muffled and distant, and the pressure of the humidity pushes against the eardrums, almost like a massage. The smell is particular, and it dampens everything else.

You see distant shapes that, as they draw closer, take form. Then they vanish, shortly after, just as they appeared. In silence, in indifference. Because when there is my fog, people are more distant, even if they are a few metres away.

I hear my thoughts, in my fog. Only them. Only mine. Because everything is muffled, even the existence of others. And I don't get distracted, in my fog, because all around there is only her, massaging my skin and reminding me to think of myself.

It is me, among the shadows, in my fog. There are people, but there is no one.

The only certainty is that I am here.