A Poem About Loneliness

A Poem About Loneliness

I should’ve said I don’t care. You might as well have been telling me about the newest Nike shoes. It is a picture drawn about life, it isn’t life. I was talking about my life. I wrote this poem again.  This is my third time writing this poem for you.

You are not alone.

I wrote about how other people are hell to me, 

How aloneness is hell to me because of other people, 

I wrote about how I am burned by everything I touch.

I wrote about having no one.

Always being the last person speaking, 

Always being the one waiting for a reply. 

Loneliness makes your life have no meaning, 

Its why people go crazy from it, 

Thinking about the phrase   -  If a tree falls in the wood and there’s no one around to hear it, did it really fall at all? 

Did it really fall at all? 

Thinking about your own funeral - 

         when everyone who abandoned you would finally be excited to see you. They would all come, on time, just to see you! Or maybe they would forget, 

cancel, be late, disappear, 

Just like they did when you were alive.

Loneliness is not about romance.

It doesn’t matter what it looks like I’m doing. 

Those friendly words are just steam coming out of my gullet, 

Thin ribbons of smoke floating through the air, 

Floating around and dissipating up there, by the light. 

Loneliness is not about love.

I fall in love so often its like 

A routine beating 

I’ve been assigned for some long past transgression. 

It makes you sick.

Hurts all through the body 

The sting of that first slap 

The last hit 

Reverberating 

From the red, raw, 

place where the hand made contact.

You are not alone.

Would you like to have your own place 

With a guest room, a garden, 

A place for people to stay with a

Bed, a table, a vase, (something that isn’t flowers) 

I haven’t held hands with someone, 

 Laid my head on their shoulder, 

                                Put my hand on their thigh, 

                                    Put my leg over theirs, 

                                       Danced together, 

                             Kissed, 

                              Kissed on the cheek, 

     Kissed on the forehead, 

                                  The neck, 

                                     The stomach, 

                                      The hand, 

                                         The wrist, 

                                           Put my arms around them, 

                                            Laid down together, 

                                             Ran my hand over their side, 

                                                Laid my arms across their collar bones, 

                                                 Buried my face in their chest, 

                                                 Watched them fall asleep on mine, 

                                                  Watched them fall asleep on mine, 

                                               Felt their fingers at my back, 

                                                      Touched their hair, 

                                                      Hugged because I actually meant it

I want to get my own place after I graduate. I can feel the inevitability of being alone. I can see myself sitting in that house and no friends will come. After I graduate they will disappear like petals on the wind. I’m not afraid of this, it isn’t a feeling at all, just something I know I cannot be blindsided by.     I do not believe you. 

When I was young I used to wait 

By the window for my friends to come 

Down the stairs, 

They must have come with their mothers. It must have been 

Hours I waited. 

I waited all day, there was nothing else I cared about on those days. 

It was so exciting to have another person come over. 

         It’s hard to tell how old I am now, I wear grey all the time. I made a book about loneliness and I don’t think about it anymore and it was grey too. Grey on the cover and on the inside and it was a grey too warm for my imagining and there were no other options. I put grey pictures inside and I crossed out the names of everyone I cared about so they wouldn’t know that I liked them, loved them. I’m not sure if I’m still that child I used to be or if I’m so old it’s not a number recorded by human time. Growing sideways. I’m not a teenager anymore

I was knocked out, 

Lying on the ground, with static on my eyes, 

White mites crawling over, eager to eat me alive. 

Boned back against the grey concrete. 

I must’ve missed those teenage years because I started going backwards during them, something gone wrong.

Eight years old. 

Nine years old. 

Thirteen years old. 

I was a teenager for three years, instead of six. 

Eyes painted white, 

Hollow, nocturnal creature with no colour.

When I was hit it was dark grey, 

A rock that weighed so much it cracked 

My skull 

Against the pavement.

I think I’ll always be walking away from a wall, 

Dark grey, 

so huge behind me. 

I started running and I tripped, I started walking and I 

Kept looking back. 

It feels like it gets taller when I stare 

Or maybe it grows when I’m not looking. 

I wish that I could get over it, back to the place that had colour. 

Do I deserve it? 

But I can’t, if I did that it would be so close that it would be right in front of me. 

I can’t get rid of it. 

In the place before the wall 

I thought I was evil I thought 

There were two red devil horns on my head, 

Glowing red, glowing blue, with a halo in between them too. 

I was yellow and orange and blue and bright, bright pink, like the dresses I used to wear when I was younger.