The town feels like it’s getting smaller every week. It’s not that it’s emptier—there are still people about—but it feels physically diminished. Routes that I’ve used for years are suddenly closed for ‘maintenance,’ or certain footpaths are blocked off with temporary fencing. Your habits adjust without you even noticing. You take the long way around, you avoid the park, you skip the late-night shop. You don’t realize how much you’ve changed until you try to go somewhere you’ve always gone and realize you can’t get there anymore. It’s like the map is being redrawn in pencil, and someone is slowly erasing the edges. It’s a subtle kind of claustrophobia.
Quiet Contours
That’s a good way of putting it.