Estrangement

There was a time everyone knew everyone else in town. The striking
resemblance in people's faces and bodies gave them away, plain as 
a "Hello I'm _" name tag or a genealogy chart. All the descendants 
of one family parted their hair exactly in the same place, and wore 
two identical braids on each side. In another family, foreheads were 
broad cliff faces with just the slightest rounding at the top. For some, 
it was the left or right shoulder sloping a certain way, an extra finger,
or forearm skin the texture of bark. You could not remember when it
happened, but suddenly, there were rumors about nephews being 
banished, uncles turned out of the house. Their names were never 
spoken again. It was as if they never existed. To estrange comes 
from estrangier, meaning to alienate; or from the Latin extraneare, 
to treat as a stranger, as someone outside the fold. You could not 
believe that it could ever happen to you until it did. Until everything 
you said or wrote or shared with some of the people who used to be 
most familiar to you faded into a void. 
 
Now, even the stones
streaked steel-blue or indigo
feel warm and whorled with ears.