We don’t like to admit it.
In our heads
we broker deals,
sign contracts,
form groups of more.
But they go home.
And leave you alone.
They go to their houses,
to the families,
the warmth they’ve arranged.
It holds for a few hours.
Then they are alone, too.
At first, just thinking.
Then the thought arrives:
Is any of it real
outside my own head?
The table, the plate,
the face across from me once…
the faces across from me now…
do they exist when I’m not looking?
Or only
what I see...
enough to keep going?
Restlessness settles in.
There is something
quite exquisitely terrifying
about a person alone,
eating their dinner.
The fork lifts.
The room is quiet.
Tomorrow the same.
And the day after.
Even the people who stayed
might only be echoes
I let in.
Love felt so certain,
so close…
but maybe it’s only
my mind reaching
across the empty space
inside me.
Still,
I reach.
Not because I’m sure
anything answers back,
but because stopping
would make the alone
even heavier.
And in the reaching,
something moves.
Small.
Barely there.
Enough
to eat again.
-UpsilonA
I feel so this, so heavy...
There are people could never begin to fethom that silence well described here...
Sometimes being alone is not lonely and sometimes being with people could feel more alone...