This, you should know. You won’t find it in the telly or news or mundane chit chats at dinner on Friday night. No one will update their status, share it as a story or stop you in the streets. Almost as though it wasn’t important at all.

But it is. And you need to know. Today, it’s a human thief.

As today recedes, so will all the people you meet. The coffee barista at Costa who knows that Fridays mean a shot of Caramel in your skinny ass latté. The nameless people in your commute who smile at you in silent camaraderie. The colleague who checks up on you when you arrive late for work. They will all go, along with today. A decade on, they will only be random faces stuck in an obsolete brain cell that will never see the light of remembrance. Or an email tucked away on the 100th page of your mailbox that will never be scrolled back to.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe they are only meant to be mere passengers in your journey of life. But there are those who go who will matter. They are the ones who slip by like the circled dates in your calendar. Imperceptibly, slyly, even as you are looking at them ever so often. Today you think there is not a chance in the world that there could be a today without them. Then one morning you wake up from a new year’s hangover to realize that the ‘new’ year’s become old and somehow there are autumn leaves falling outside your window. But hang on, wasn’t it winter? You were spewing clouds from your mouths and there were clumps of dirty snow refusing to budge on the front yard. How did you fast forward to autumn? It’s so bizarre, your head hurts. Maybe it’s two seasons or a decade on but you find yourself struggling to understand how comfortably that today had faded into yesterday, weeks, months and years. How people who meant the world had vanished unbidden with the new year’s snow.

Killing without weapons.

Where did all the laughter go? You can see the fine lines around your delicate mouth but the laughter is eerily inaudible.

Lightning without sound. Where did all the warmth go?

The absence of it is pressingly cold.

Sweater without fleece.

How? Why? When? What the hell happened? Its feels so damn real and oddly distant all at the same time. Like a second-old dream slipping from the folds of your grey matter. You give up. You start your new today. You forget about its temporary-ness in the confusion of life. As you sit on one of her transient seconds, she is already half gone. You hardly notice as she slinks away, snatching up your belongings as she goes.

The dates in your calendar. The snow. The laughter. The warmth. The people.

Today, it’s a human thief.